BR  1703  .P76  1896 

The  prophets  of  the 
christian  faith 


THE  PROPHETS  OF  THE 
CHRISTIAN   FAITH 


•Thg^><y^o 


THE  "^PROPHETS 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 


BY   THE 

REV.  LYMAN  ABBOTT,  REV.  FRANCIS  ^KOWN,  REV.  GEORGE 

MATHESON,  REV.  MARCUS 'DODS,  REV.  A.  C.  McGIFFERT, 

VERY'  REV.  W.  H.  "FREMANTLE,  PROFESSOR  ADOLF 

*HARNACK,  REV.  A.  M.  FAIRBAIRN,  REV.  T.  T. 

MUN6ER,   REV.   A.   V.   G.   ALLEN,   AND 

VERY"  REV.   F.   W.   FARRAR 


Weil)  gork 
THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1896 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1896, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


NoriDoolr  3Pwgg 

J.  S.  Cushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U-S.A. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.     WHAT  IS  A  PROPHET?    .         .         .         .        1 

By  the  Rev.  Lyman  Arbott,  D.D.,  Pastor  of  Plym- 
outh Church,  Brooklyn. 

II.     ISAIAH  AS  A  PREACHER         ...       17 

By  the  Rev.  Fran'cis  Beown,  D.D.,  Professor  in 
Union  Theological  Seminary,  New  York. 

III.  THE  APOSTLE   PAUL  ....       33 

By  the  Rev.  George  Matheson,  D.D.,  Pastor  of 
St.  Bernard's  Church,  Edinburgh,  Scotland. 

IV.  CLEMENT   OF  ALEXANDRIA    ...       49 

By  the  Rev.  Mabccs  Dods,  D.D.,  Professor  of  New 
Testament  Exegesis  in  New  College,  Edinburgh, 
Scotland. 

V.     ST.   AUGUSTINE   AS  A  PROPHET  .        .       65 

By  the  Rev.  Arthur  C  McGiffert,  D.D.,  Professor 
of  Church  History  in  Union  Theological  Seminary, 
New  York. 

VI.    JOHN   WYCLIFFE 81 

By  the  Very  Rev.  W.  H.  Fekmantle,  D.D.,  Dean  of 
Ripon. 

VII.     MARTIN    LUTHER,    THE    PROPHET    OF 

THE   REFORMATION         .         .         .         .107 
By  Professor  Adolf  IIaknack. 
V 


vi  Contents 

PAQE 

VIII.     JOHN   WESLEY 123 

By  the  Very  Eev.  F.    W.  Faerar,  D.D.,  Dean  of 
Canterbury. 

IX.     JONATHAN   EDWARDS        .         .        .         .145 

By  the  Kev.  A.  M.  Faikbairn,  D.D.,  Principal  of 
Mansfield  College,  Oxford,  England. 

X.     HORACE   BUSHNELL   .         .         .        .        .     167 

By  the  Kev.  T.  T.  Mungee,  D.D. 

XI.     FREDERICK  DENISON  MAURICE    .         .     193 

By  the  Eev.  A.  Y.  G.  Allen,  D.D. 

XII.     CAN   WE  BE   PROPHETS?  .         .         .215 

By  the  Very  Rev.  F.  W.  Farrab,  D.D.,  Dean  of 
Canterbury. 


I 

WHAT  IS  A  PROPHET? 


PROPHETS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN 
FAITH 

I 

WHAT   IS   A   PROPHET? 

BT    THE    REV.    LYMAN    ABBOTT,    D.D. 

"Just  as  a  dumb  or  retired  person,"  says 
Ewald,  "  must  have  a  speaker  to  speak  for  him 
and  declare  his  thoughts,  so  must  God,  who  is 
dumb  with  respect  to  the  mass  of  men,  have 
his  messenger  or  speaker;  and  hence  the  word 
[prophet],  in  its  sacred  sense,  denotes  him 
who  speaks  not  of  himself,  but  as  commis- 
sioned by  his  God."  Accepting  this  general 
definition,  the  prophet  is  an  interpreter  of 
God  to  men;  he  is  not  so  much  a  foreteller 
as  a  forthteller.  He  receives  his  message 
from  the  Eternal  and  gives  it  as  the  messen- 
ger of  the  Eternal.  The  difference  between 
the  prophet  and  the  priest  is  far  more  radical 
3 


4  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

than  Carlyle  has  represented  it  to  be  in  his 
"  Heroes  and  Hero- Worship. "  The  priest  inter- 
prets man  to  God.  The  office  of  priesthood 
assumes  that  God  is  too  holy  for  ordinary 
mortals  to  approach;  that  some  special  per- 
sons must  be  appointed  to  mediate  between 
man  and  God  and  approach  God  in  lieu  of, 
or  in  behalf  of,  man.  He  who  believes  that 
God  is  the  All-Father,  and  that  his  ear  is 
open  to  the  faintest  cry  of  his  feeblest  child, 
will  have  no  place  in  his  thoughts  for  any 
such  mediator  between  man  and  his  God. 
The  office  of  the  prophet  is  quite  different. 
The  need  of  a  prophet  grows,  not  out  of  the 
inaccessibility  of  God,  but  out  of  the  imper- 
fection of  men.  It  is  not  —  in  this  I  venture 
to  differ  with  Ewald,  at  least  in  phraseology 
—  because  God  is  dumb,  but  because  man  is 
deaf.  Man  lives  so  in  the  sphere  of  the  mate- 
rial, he  is  so  dependent  upon  the  senses  as  a 
medium  of  communication,  that  he  cannot  ap- 
preciate, cannot  understand,  can  hardly  even 
receive,  a  message  which  is  not  translated 
into  words.  He  is,  indeed,  the  recipient  of 
certain  vague  impressions,  but  he  cannot  in- 
terpret their  meaning.  He  requires  some  one 
to  interpret  them  to  him,  to  embody  them  in 


What  is  a  Prophet?  5 

language,  to  explain  himself  to  himself,  and 
so  to  make  God  and  God's  message  clear  to 
him.  There  is  something  like  this  in  litera- 
ture, art,  and  music.  The  poet,  the  artist, 
the  musician,  are  each  a  kind  of  prophet.  In 
all  men  there  is  some  poetic  nature,  some  dim 
perception  of  truth  and  beauty  felt  rather  than 
perceived;  sometimes  it  is  not  even  felt,  there 
is  only  a  potentiality  of  feeling.  The  poet, 
by  his  expression,  develops  this  potentiality, 
brings  forth  this  hidden  and  sub-conscious  life 
into  consciousness,  enables  the  soul  to  per- 
ceive what  it  could  not  perceive  without  this 
poetic  interpreter.  So  the  artist  awakens  the 
dormant  sense  of  beauty,  by  presenting  beauty 
to  the  sense-perception  of  men  who  were  in- 
capable of  perceiving  it  by  pure  imagination; 
and  the  musician  evokes  musical  life  in  souls 
incapable  of  responding  to  unheard  music. 
Similarly,  in  every  soul  there  is  a  possibility 
of  divine  life,  a  half-conscious  recognition  of 
truth  and  duty,  of  purity  and  love,  of  good- 
ness and  God.  The  prophet  utters  what  un- 
prophetic  souls  only  vaguely  feel,  and  thus 
vitalizes  their  feeling  and  converts  it  into 
will,  purpose,  action. 

Prophecy,   then,   assumes   that  God  is  ever 


6  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

brooding  his  children,  awakening  in  them  a 
life  higher  than  their  own,  leading  them  up 
into  life  and  light,  as  the  sun  leads  up  the 
plant  from  the  darkness  of  the  soil  into  the 
light  of  day.  Some  men  are  hardly  conscious 
of  this  divine  life;  others  are  conscious  of  it 
only  on  rare  occasions;  some  possess  it  as  a 
vague,  uninterpreted  feeling,  an  enigmatical, 
restless  desire  for  they  know  not  what,  a 
dream  from  which  they  seem  to  themselves  to 
be  continually  awakening  to  the  stern  realities 
of  life,  a  half-seen  vision  which  disappears 
before  it  is  really  discerned;  while  to  some  it 
is  the  dominant  force  of  their  lives,  the  direct- 
ing purpose,  the  rudder-holding  hand,  the  great 
reality.  Among  these  last,  those  who  have  the 
power  to  phrase  this  divine  life  in  words,  to 
interpret  it  so  as  to  make  its  meaning  clear  to 
their  fellows,  are  the  world's  prophets.  They 
receive  their  message  from  God,  and  give  it  to 
their  fellow-men. 

Thus  the  prophets  interpret  God  to  man. 
But  they  also  interpret  man  to  himself.  They 
explain  to  him  what  was  before  enigmatical  in 
his  own  aspirations.  They  make  legible  the 
before  invisible  writing  in  his  own  experience. 
Every  man  is  at  times  vaguely  conscious  of  an 


What  is  a  Prophet  f  7 

unknown  tongue  speaking  within  himself.  The 
prophets  translate  this  unknown  tongue.  And 
no  less  do  they  interpret  the  age  to  itself. 
They  see,  not  always,  not  generally,  with  infal- 
lible accuracy,  but  more  clearly  than  their  less 
spiritually-minded  fellows,  what  is  the  mean- 
ing of  the  age,  what  the  providential  purpose 
which  is  in  process  of  fulfilment,  what  its  di- 
vine trend,  what  its  great  issues  are  sure  to  be. 
And  because  the  object  of  their  speech  is  to 
prepare  men  for  these  issues  by  interpreting 
to  them  this  providential  purpose,  their  forth- 
telling  is  also  a  foretelling.  The  prophet  is  not 
a  mere  historian  ;  he  is  a  historian  only  for  the 
purpose  of  interpretation,  and  an  interpreter 
only  for  the  purpose  of  leadership.  For  his 
purpose  is  always  to  lead  the  people  forth,  to 
enable  them  to  understand  God's  will  in  order 
that  they  may  do  God's  work. 

The  prophet,  therefore,  is  always  a  combi- 
nation of  piety  and  sympathy.  A  recluse  is 
never  truly  a  prophet.  The  mere  man  of  action 
is  never  truly  a  prophet.  He  must  be  both  a 
man  of  his  time  and  a  man  of  eternity.  He  is 
to  interpret  God  to  the  men  of  his  age;  he 
must,  therefore,  understand  both  God  and  the 
men  of   his  age.      He  is  to  translate  the  Ian- 


8  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

guage  of  heaven  into  the  language  of  earth ; 
he  must,  therefore,  understand  both  languages. 
He  must,  accordingly,  first  of  all  be  what  the 
Bible  calls  him,  a  "man  of  God,"  that  is,  a 
man  whose  life  is  born  of  God  and  comes  forth 
from  God.  He  must  walk  with  God,  live  with 
God,  commune  with  God,  or  he  cannot  under- 
stand God's  message.  He  must  go  up  into 
Mount  Sinai  with  Moses,  up  into  the  Mount 
of  Transfiguration  with  Christ.  He  must  be 
at  times  absolutely  alone  with  his  God  to  re- 
ceive God's  message.  But  it  is  not  enough 
that  he  receive  the  message ;  he  must  also  be 
able  to  impart  it.  Not  every  spiritually -minded 
man  is  a  prophet.  He  must  also  understand 
men  —  the  men  of  his  own  age,  their  lives, 
their  experiences,  their  needs.  The  prophets, 
therefore,  belong  to  no  class  or  order.  Rarely 
has  one  been  taken  from  any  select  circle, 
whether  ecclesiastical  or  social.  Moses  was  a 
herdsman,  David  a  shepherd,  Isaiah  a  peasant's 
son.  When  one  is  found  in  the  hierarchy,  this 
very  fact  limits  his  usefulness ;  Ezekiel  is  not 
so  widely  read  nor  so  widely  useful  as  the  Great 
Unknown.  The  school  of  the  prophets  pro- 
duces no  prophets.  They  cannot  be  created  by 
educational  processes.     Education  may  add  to 


What  is  a  Prophet?  9 

their  equipment,  but  it  is  not  and  cannot  be  the 
secret  of  their  power.  That  lies  in  the  posses- 
sion of  this  twofold  faculty  —  the  hearing  ear 
and  the  speaking  mouth ;  the  ear  to  hear  God, 
the  mouth  to  speak  to  man ;  the  understanding 
of  God's  message,  and  the  capacity  to  impart  it 
to  men  who  have  not  understood  it. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  prophet  is 
always,  or  even  generally,  the  bearer  of  a  new 
message  to  the  world.  This  he  may  sometimes 
be,  but  more  generally  he  interprets  to  a  wider 
circle  a  truth  before  known  only  to  a  few ;  or 
makes  vital  in  life  a  truth  which  before  was 
only  a  philosophical  opinion ;  or  restores  to 
human  consciousness  a  truth  it  had  lost ;  or 
puts  into  new  and  better  perspective  a  truth 
which  had  been  suffered  to  lie  forgotten  in 
the  background ;  or  carries  on  to  its  legiti- 
mate and  necessary  conclusions  truths  whose 
issue  and  meaning  the  world  had  not  seen ;  or 
makes  new  applications  of  familiar  truths.  The 
few  philosophers  of  Egypt  believed  that  there 
was  one  God  above  all  gods;  Moses  brought 
this  truth  out  of  its  hiding-place  in  the  schools 
and  made  it  the  foundation  of  a  new  State 
and  the  inspiration  of  a  new  worship.  This 
prophet  of  the  Law  taught  that  God  is  one, 


10  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

that  he  is  a  righteous  God,  and  that  he  requires 
righteousness  of  his  children.  This  is  the  bur- 
den of  the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  which  is 
probably  the  oldest  writing  in  the  Bible,  and 
of  Deuteronomy,  which,  whatever  its  date  as  a 
manuscript,  embodies  the  prophetic  message  of 
Moses,  the  great  Lawgiver.  David  brought 
into  the  foreground  the  truth  that  God  is  mer- 
ciful, sang  of  a  Father  who  pities  his  children, 
and  handed  down  to  future  generations,  as  his 
bequest  to  them,  the  revelation  embodied  in 
the  phrase  "The  sure  mercies  of  David." 
Elijah  proclaimed  nothing  new  ;  he  simply  re- 
told the  story  of  the  past  —  one  God,  just  and 
merciful ;  he  was  the  prophet  of  a  restoration. 
The  Great  Unknown  —  the  second  Isaiah  — 
himself  taught  by  the  years  of  captivity  in 
Babylon  that  the  spirit  of  righteousness  and 
reverence  is  not  confined  within  any  geographi- 
cal boundaries,  saw  clearly  that  if  there  is  but 
one  God,  ever  righteous  and  merciful,  then  his 
law  extends  over  all  nations  and  his  mercy  is 
provided  for  all ;  he  was  the  prophet  of  a  cath- 
olic religion. 

It  is  equally  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  proph- 
ecy ceased  and  prophets  were  no  more  after 
the  coming  of  Christ.     It  is  true  that  a  chief 


What  is  a  Prophet?  11 

message  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets,  from 
Moses  to  Malachi,  is  that  a  Messiah  is  yet  to 
come  ;  and,  of  course,  after  he  had  come,  this 
theme,  as  one  of  foretelling,  ceased  forever. 
What  had  been  prophecy  became  history.  The 
Incarnation,  which  had  been  a  vision  and  a 
hope,  became  a  fact  witnessed  to  by  the  senses : 
a  somewhat  concerning  which  the  Apostle 
could  write,  "which  we  have  seen  with  our 
eyes,  which  we  have  looked  upon,  and  our 
hands  have  handled  of  the  Word  of  life." 
But  in  the  larger  sense  of  a  forthtelling — a 
spiritual  perception,  and  an  effective  interpreta- 
tion—  prophecy  has  not  ceased,  and  will  not, 
until  every  eye  shall  see  Him  face  to  face.  A 
wider  range  of  prophecy,  not  its  cessation,  is 
anticipated  by  Joel  as  the  result  of  the  Incarna- 
tion. The  secret  of  prophecy  is  imparted  by 
Christ  to  the  Apostles  when  he  breathes  upon 
them  ;  the  promise  of  prophecy,  when  he  prom- 
ises the  Holy  Spirit  to  guide  them  into  all 
truth  ;  the  commission  to  prophesy,  in  the  com- 
mand, "  What  ye  hear  in  the  ear,  that  proclaim 
ye  upon  the  housetops."  Prophets  are  men- 
tioned in  the  Book  of  Acts  as  recognized 
teachers  in  the  Apostolic  Church,  and  are  in- 
cluded by  Paul  in  his  list  of  its  ministers ;  and 


12  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

the  preacher's  recipient  faith  is  accounted  by 
him  as  at  once  the  measure  and  the  secret  of 
the  prophet's  forthtelling.  To  deny  to  the 
Christian  Church  prophets,  to  assume  that 
prophecy  ceased  with  the  close  of  the  New- 
Testament  canon,  to  draw  a  sharp  line  between 
the  prophets  before  and  the  prophets  subse- 
quent to  the  first  century,  appears  to  me  to 
foster  two  errors  :  one,  that  which  imputes  to 
the  Hebrew  prophets  an  infallibility  which  they 
never  claimed  for  themselves  ;  the  other,  to 
deny  to  the  Church  since  Christ  that  presence 
of  a  living,  speaking,  interpreted  God,  which 
was  characteristic  of  the  Hebrew  Church,  and 
which  Christ  distinctly  and  emphatically  de- 
clared should  continue  to  be  characteristic  of 
the  Christian  Church. 

In  a  true  sense,  every  real  preacher  is  a 
prophet.  If  he  is  not  a  prophet,  if  he  does  not 
receive  a  message  direct  from  God  which  he 
can  communicate  to  man,  if  he  is  not  a  forth- 
teller,  an  interpreter,  a  divine  messenger,  he 
is  no  true  preacher.  In  one  respect  he  has 
an  immeasurable  advantage  which  the  earlier 
prophets  did  not  possess.  His  message  he  can 
always  compare  with  the  life  and  teachings  of 
his  Master,  and  thus  determine  whether  it  is  in 


What  is  a  Prophet  P  13 

very  truth  a  divine  message  or  only  a  human 
phantasy.  His  message  will  sometimes,  per- 
haps generally,  be  a  simple  re-enunciation  of 
that  which  other  Christian  prophets  have  given 
or  are  giving  ;  but  it  will  have  no  real  pro- 
phetic power  unless  it  has  come  to  him  from  his 
Father,  for  he  can  prophesy  only  according  to 
the  proportion  of  his  faith,  only  as  what  he 
has  heard  in  the  ear  he  is  proclaiming  from 
the  pulpit.  But  while  thus  every  Christian 
preacher  may  be  and  should  be  a  prophet,  an 
interpreter  of  the  mystic  voice  of  God  to  the 
men  of  his  generation,  there  have  been  pre-emi- 
nent prophets  in  the  Christian  Church  as  there 
were  in  the  Hebrew  Church,  men  whose  mes- 
sage has  had  all  the  force  of  a  new  revelation, 
men  whose  faith  vitalized  truths  that  were 
before  held  as  mere  inert  opinions,  or  revived 
truths  that  had  been  forgotten,  or  revealed  — 
that  is,  unveiled  —  truths  to  the  common  peo- 
ple which  had  been  concealed  in  the  closets  of 
the  few,  or  made  new  applications  of  familiar 
truths  to  new  and  unfamiliar  conditions  of  life. 
These  men  are  as  truly  prophets,  interpreters, 
forthtellers,  as  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  or  Ezekiel. 
Such  was  Clement  of  Alexandria,  with  his 
message  of  the  divine  immanence ;  Augustine, 


14  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

with  his  message  of  divine  sovereignty  from 
the  authority  of  which  no  man  can  escape  ; 
Luther,  with  his  message  of  personal  responsi- 
bility to  God  and  therefore  personal  freedom 
from  all  who  interpose  themselves  between  the 
soul  and  God  ;  John  Wesley,  with  his  message 
that  the  Christian  religion  is  the  universal 
religion,  adapted  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men ;  Jonathan  Edwards,  with  his  revived 
statement  of  the  combined  messages  of  Cle- 
ment and  Augustine,  divine  sovereignty  and 
divine  indwelling  ;  Swedenborg,  with  his  mes- 
sage that  religion  is  life,  not  ritual  or  dogma  ; 
Maurice,  with  his  message  of  a  living  God  as 
the  Father  of  whom  the  whole  family  in  heaven 
and  on  earth  is  named  ;  Bushnell,  with  his 
message  of  the  transcendent  character  of  spirit- 
ual experience  and  the  inadequacy  of  all  creeds, 
traditions,  and  theologies  to  give  expression  to 
it ;  Channing,  with  his  message  that  man  is 
God's  son,  however  far  he  may  have  wandered 
from  his  Father's  house  ;  Finney,  with  his 
message  to  a  paralyzed  Church  bound  in  the 
chains  of  a  fatalistic  philosophy,  "All  things 
are  possible  to  him  that  believeth "  ;  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  with  his  message  summoning 
the  Puritan  Church  from  bowing  awe-stricken 


What  is  a  Prophet  f  15 

at  the  foot  of  Mount  Sinai  to  clasp  love-stricken 
the  cross  on  Calvary  ;  Phillips  Brooks,  with 
his  message  of  the  universal  presence  and 
grace  of  God  and  the  abundance  of  life  in 
and  through  his  indwelling  —  these  and  many- 
others  have  been  true  prophets  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  Every  such  man  seeing  the  need 
of  humanity,  receiving  his  message  from  God 
and  giving  it  as  God's  interpreter  to  God's 
children  —  a  son  of  man,  but  no  less  a  son  of 
God,  sent  by  God  to  be  a  forthteller  of  God's 
word,  in  whatever  age  or  community  he  may 
live,  however  large  or  small  his  audience,  how- 
ever fresh  or  familiar  his  message,  is  a  prophet 
of  the  living  God. 


II 

ISAIAH   AS  A  PREACHER 


II 

ISAIAH  AS   A   PREACHER 

BT   THE    REV.    FRANCIS    BROWN,    D.D. 

Much  depends  on  our  understanding  the  re- 
lation of  the  prophets  to  their  own  times.  It 
is  difficult  for  some  good  people  to  learn  that 
this  is  of  primary  consequence  —  only  less  funda- 
mental than  their  close  relation  to  God.  The 
importance  they  have  for  us  rests  very  largely 
on  the  more  direct  importance  they  had  for  their 
own  contemporaries.  No  intelligent  person  now 
supposes  that  prediction  is  all  of  prophecy,  but 
many  intelligent  persons  fail  to  perceive  or  to 
appreciate  the  fact  that,  in  God's  ordering,  pre- 
dictive prophecy  is  conditioned  by  the  circum- 
stances that  attended  its  birth,  and  is  designed 
to  affect  contemporary  belief  and  life.  The 
same  thing  is  true  of  the  moral  and  religious 
teachings  of  the  prophets.  The  prophets  were 
not  moral  philosophers  nor  systematic  theolo- 
gians. Neither  the  speculative  nor  the  scien- 
19 


20  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

tific  spirit  controlled  them.  They  had  visions, 
but  they  were  not  visionaries;  they  taught  great 
truths,  but  they  were  not  professors  of  dogmatics. 
They  were  men  of  intense  spiritual  life,  eager 
to  influence  the  national  organism  of  which  they 
themselves  formed  a  part — the  men  and  women 
among  whom  they  moved,  whose  wants  and  sins 
they  clearly  saw.  They  were  not  essayists  nor 
theorizers.  They  were  preachers  and  interpret- 
ers. From  the  stern  announcements  of  Amos 
and  the  passionate  pleadings  of  Hosea,  down 
to  the  fierce  joy  of  Nahum  over  Nineveh's  fall, 
the  melancholy  of  Jeremiah  at  his  people's  ca- 
lamity, and  the  encouragements  and  spiritual 
exhortations  of  Haggai,  Zechariah,  and  Mala- 
chi,  they  are  all  men  of  their  own  people,  with 
throbbing,  longing  hearts.  Even  the  apoca- 
lyptic prophets,  such  as  Ezekiel,  Joel,  and 
Daniel,  make  present  conditions  their  start- 
ing-point. It  is  this  which,  humanly  speak- 
ing, gives  to  their  messages  their  permanent 
vitality.  Conditions  and  circumstances  change, 
but  the  living  God  and  the  heart  of  man  abide, 
and  those  who  have  ever  really  interpreted  the 
one  to  the  other  are  the  preachers  of  all  time. 

As  soon  as  we  recognize  the  prophets  as  chil- 
dren and  servants  of  their  own  age,  the  study 


Isaiah  as  a  Preacher  21 

of  that  age  and  its  various  periods  and  experi- 
ences becomes  imperative.  We  cannot  under- 
stand them  without  knowing  the  character  and 
needs  of  their  people  at  the  time  when  they 
spoke.  The  better  we  know  these  —  the  more 
minutely  we  learn  the  fitness  of  prophetic 
utterances  to  the  exact  situations  that  called 
them  forth  —  the  richer  will  these  utterances 
become  for  us,  not  only  as  memorials  of  a  past 
age,  but  also,  and  especially,  as  messages  to 
ourselves. 

No  prophet  illustrates  all  this  better  than  that 
most  gifted  of  the  prophets,  Isaiah.  Isaiah  was 
a  man  of  great  natural  endowments,  intensified 
and  consecrated  to  the  loftiest  ends  by  his  self- 
surrender  to  God.  He  had  the  intellectual 
grasp  of  a  great  statesman,  and  the  fervid  im- 
agination of  a  great  poet.  He  could  make 
combinations  and  foresee  consequences,  and 
warn  him  who  ventured  upon  devious  ways ; 
he  could  portray  with  sustained  power,  he  could 
overwhelm  with  the  outpourings  of  righteous 
indignation,  he  could  pierce  with  irony,  he 
could  cheapen  with  ridicule,  he  could  mourn 
over  his  self-destroying  people,  he  could  sym- 
pathize with  the  downcast,  he  could  rise  to 
heights  of   spiritual   experience  and   anticipa- 


22  Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

tion.  All  his  gifts  were  in  the  service  of  his 
generation.  He  was  absorbed  in  them,  and 
in  God's  dealings  with  them.  The  present 
was  awful  to  him  because  of  its  issues  for 
them;  the  future  was  gloomy  because  it  held 
punishment  for  their  obstinacy,  or  bright  be- 
cause after  the  purification  was  to  come  their 
glory  and  their  peace. 

Fortunately  for  us,  in  the  case  of  no  other 
prophet  have  we  a  better  opportunity  to  learn 
the  concrete  character  of  his  thought,  or  study 
the  influences  which  shaped  its  expression.  ^ 
While  our  information  is  only  to  a  slight  de- 
gree of  a  personal  character,  and  while  our 
knowledge  of  the  contemporary  history  is  not 
equally  full  at  all  points,  we  find  that  there 
were  two  crises  in  the  national  life  around 
which  many  of  Isaiah's  most  telling  sermons 
group  themselves — the  Syro-Ephraimistic  war 
(B.C.  734  ff.),  with  the  Assyrian  campaign 
under  Tiglathpileser  III.,  by  which  that  war 

1  Among  recent  writers  in  English  on  this  subject  may  he 
named  Canon  S.  R.  Driver,  D.D.,  "Isaiah,  His  Life  and 
Times,"  2d  Ed.,  1893  ;  Professor  George  Adam  Smith,  D.D., 
"The  Book  of  Isaiah,"  Vol.  I.,  1889  ;  Canon  T.  K.  Cheyne, 
D.D.,  "Introduction  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah,"  1895  ;  Professor 
Maximilian  Lindsay  Kellner,  "The  Prophecies  of  Isaiah: 
An  Outline  Study,"  1896. 


Isaiah  as  a  Preacher  23 

was  terminated,  and  the  invasion  of  Sennache- 
rib, B.C.  701.  Lack  of  exact  chronological 
arrangement  in  our  present  Isaian  collection 
makes  the  assignment  of  the  various  addresses 
and  sermons  more  difficult  than  it  otherwise 
would  be,  but  scholars  are  fairly  well  agreed 
as  to  the  illustrations  here  given. 

As  so  frequently  happens  under  autocratic 
rule,  the  humiliation  of  Judah  under  Ahaz 
followed  speedily  upon  the  military  successes 
of  Uzziah  and  Jotham  —  Ahaz's  grandfather 
and  father.  The  bold  leader  and  strong  ruler 
passes  away,  a  weakling  succeeds  him,  and 
there  is  no  habit  of  self-control,  self-reliance, 
and  responsible  patriotism  in  the  many,  to  take 
the  place  of  the  one  vigorous  hand.  Probably 
the  earliest  words  of  Isaiah  preserved  to  us  are 
those  in  which  he  characterized  the  moral  con- 
dition of  Judah  at  the  close  of  Jotham's  reign 
and  the  beginning  of  that  of  Ahaz,  about  the 
year  735.  Conquest  had  brought  increase  of 
wealth,  luxury,  pride,  idolatry,  looseness  of 
life,  weakening  of  moral  fibre.  The  inevitable 
consequences  of  this  emasculation  could  not  be 
hidden  from  the  keen  eye  of  Isaiah,  divinely 
clarified,  and  sweeping  the  horizon,  upon  which 
the  might  of  Assyria  was  distinctly  looming  up. 


24  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Accusation  and  warning  have  seldom  been  ad- 
dressed to  a  nation  in  nobler  and  more  search- 
ing language  than  that  preserved  to  us  —  in 
a  somewhat  fragmentary  form,  it  is  true  —  in 
Isa.  ii.  6-21.  After  the  arraignment,  vv.  6  ff., 
comes  the  announcement  of  the  judgment  day 
of  Yahweh,  vv.  12  ff. : 

For  a  day  hath  Yahweh  Sebaoth 
Upon  all  that  is  exalted  and  high, 
And  upon  all  that  is  uplifted,  —  yea  it  shall  be 
laid  low,  — 

And  upon  all  the  cedars  of  Lebanon, 

And  upon  all  the  oaks  of  Bashan. 

And  upon  all  the  high  mountains, 

And  upon  all  the  uplifted  hills. 

And  upon  every  tower  that  is  lofty, 

And  upon  every  fortified  wall, 

And  upon  all  Tarshish  ships. 

And  upon  all  the  objects  of  delight. 

And  the  haughtiness  of  man  shall  be  abased, 

And  brought  low  the  loftiness  of  men. 

And  Yahweh  alone  shall  be  exalted 

In  that  day ! 

The  early  part  of  the  third  chapter  contains 
the  prophet's  scourging  attack  on  the  political 
condition  of  the  people  under  the  weak  and 
effeminate  rule  of  Ahaz. 


Isaiah  as  a  Preacher  25 

For  behold !  the  Lord,  Yahweh  Sebaoth, 
Removeth  from  Jerusalem  and  from  Judah  sup- 
port and  stay, 

Hero  and  man  of  war,  judge  and  prophet, 
And  diviner  and  elder,  captain  of  fifty  and  ex- 
alted one, 

And  counsellor  and  skilful  magician  and  shrewd 
enchanter, 

And  I  will  set  boys  as  their  princes,  and  chil- 
dren shall  rule  over  them  (vv.  1-4). 

My  people,  its  overseer  is  a  wilful  child. 
And  women,  they  have  ruled  over  it ; 
My  people,  those  guiding  thee  are  misleading, 
And  the  way  of  thy  paths  they  have  swallowed 
up  (v.  12). 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  same  chapter  comes 
the  intense  and  contemptuous  ridicule  of  the 
luxurious  and  worthless  women  of  the  court. 
In  chapter  v.  8  ff.,  we  find  a  group  of 
"Woes"  pronounced  upon  oppression,  intem- 
perance, and  reckless  presumption,  and  at  the 
beginning  of  the  same  chapter  a  statement  of 
the  whole  case  of  Yahweh  against  Israel,  in 
which  sternness  is  joined  with  profound  and 
tender  sadness  : 


What  was  there  more  to  do  for  my  vineyard  that 
I  did  not  in  it  ? 


26  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Why  did  I  expect  it  to  bear  grape-clusters,  and 
it  bore  worthless  things  ? 

Chapter  vii.,  which  begins  in  narrative  form, 
shows  us  the  invasion  of  Pekah  and  Rezin 
already  in  progress,  and  the  prophet  vainly 
endeavouring  to  awaken  faith  in  God  in  the 
heart  of  the  superficial  and  faint-hearted 
Ahaz,  who  appears  already  to  have  formed 
the  plan  of  saving  himself  from  the  allied 
enemies,  Aram  and  northern  Israel,  by  throw- 
ing himself  into  the  arms  of  Assyria,  as  re- 
lated in  2  Kings  xvi.  All  Isaiah's  assurances 
are  of  no  avail,  not  even  his  declaration  that 
deliverance  is  so  certain  and  will  be  so  speedy 
that  a  child  soon  to  be  born  shall  by  right 
receive  the  name  "  God-with-us,"  because  the 
hand  of  God  shall  by  that  time  already  be 
manifest  in  the  defeat  of  the  foe.  Ahaz  is  too 
timid  and  too  far  involved  with  Tiglathpileser 
to  respond,  and  the  prophet  is  compelled  to 
pass  in  vv.  17  ff.  to  an  announcement  of  the 
disaster  that  will  follow  upon  the  Assyrian 
alliance. 

To  a  time  a  little  later,  when  Assyria  was 
already  on  the  move,  belongs  the  declaration  of 
judgment  upon  the  Northern  Kingdom,  ix.  8-21, 


Isaiah  as  a  Preacher  27 

winding  up  with  the  magnificent  description 
of  the  oncoming  Assyrian  host,  v.  26-30, 
which  has  become  displaced: 

And  he  hath  lifted  up  a  signal  to  the  nations 
afar,  and  hath  hissed  to  him  at  the  end  of  the 
earth, 

And  behold,  hastily,  swiftly,  he  cometh ! 

None  weary,  and  none  stimibling  among  them,  — 
he  slumbereth  not  and  he  sleepeth  not. 

And  the  girdle  of  his  loins  hath  not  been  loosed, 
and  the  thong  of  his  sandals  not  broken ! 

Whose  arrows  are  sharpened,  and  all  his  bows 
bent; 

The  hoofs  of  his  horses,  like  flint  are  they  reck- 
oned, and  his  wheels  like  the  whirlwind ! 

A  roar  he  hath  like  the  lion,  he  roareth  like  the 
young  lions. 

And  he  growleth,  and  he  seizeth  prey,  and  he 
carrieth  it  safe  away,  and  there  is  none  that  de- 
livereth. 

And  he  growleth  over  them  in  that  day,  like  the 
growling  of  the  sea, 

And  they  look  to  earth,  and  lo,  thick  darkness, 
and  the  light  hath  grown  dark  in  its  clouds ! 

[For  all  this  his  wrath  has  not  turned  back,  and 
still  is  his  hand  stretched  forth !  ] 

About  the  second  great  crisis  of  Jerusalem 
during  Isaiah's  ministry,  that   caused   by   the 


28  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

invasion  of  Sennacherib  in  701,  another  set  of 
prophecies  group  themselves.  In  these,  al- 
though the  people  is  not  freed  from  blame 
for  the  perils  of  the  situation,  especially  in 
respect  to  the  false  move  of  intrigue  with 
Egypt,  the  general  tone  is  more  cheerful, 
and  the  expectancy  of  deliverance  more  abso- 
lute. This  time  the  King  (Hezekiah)  and  the 
prophet  were  in  more  substantial  accord.  The 
words  of  Isaiah  contained  in  2  Kings  xix.  6, 
7,  20  ff.  (=  Isa.  xxxvii.  6,  7,  21  ff.),  indicate 
the  hopeful  tenor  of  what  he  then  felt  moved 
to  say.  From  a  somewhat  earlier  year  are 
chapters  xxix.,  xxx.,  xxxi.,  xxxii.;  more  nearly 
coincident  in  time  are  the  verses  xiv.  1-14. 
For  our  purposes  the  prophecy  concerning 
Assyria,  x.  5  £f.,  may  be  cited.  The  point  of 
view  is  different  from  that  of  ix.  7  ff.,  v. 
26  ff.  Here  the  presumption  and  the  punish- 
ment of  Assyria  is  set  in  the  foreground,  and 
assurance  is  given  to  Jerusalem  of  rescue  from 
this  seemingly  invincible  foe. 

Ho,  Asshur !  rod  of  mine  anger !  yea,  a  staff  in 
their  hand  is  my  wrath ! 

Against  a  profane  nation  do  I  send  him,  and  over 
the  people  of  my  rage  do  I  command  him ! 


Isaiah  as  a  Preacher  29 

To  take  spoil  and  seize  booty,  and  to  make  them 
a  trampling,  like  mire  in  the  streets. 

But  he,  not  so  doth  he  devise,  and  his  heart,  not 
so  doth  it  reckon. 

For  to  destroy  (is)  in  his  heart,  and  to  cut  off 
nations,  not  a  few. 

For  he  saith.  Are  not  my  princes  altogether 
kings  ?     Is  not  Calno  as  Carchemish  ? 

Or  is  not  Hamath  as  Arpad,  or  is  not  Samaria  as 
Damascus  ? 

As  my  hand  hath  lighted  upon  the  kingdoms  of 
the  no-gods,  —  and  their  images  are  more  than  in 
Jerusalem,  — 

Shall  I  not,  as  I  have  done  to  Samaria  and  her 
no-gods,  so  do  to  Jerusalem  and  her  idols  ? 

But  Yahweh  shall  punish  him  for  his  pre- 
sumption. The  passage  ends  with  the  imagi- 
native picture  of  the  approach  of  the  Assyrian 
army  to  Jerusalem  from  the  north,  and  its 
sudden  overthrow  (vv.  28-34): 

He  hath  come  upon  Ayyath,  hath  passed  by 
Migron,  at  Michmash  he  storeth  his  baggage ; 

They  have  crossed  the  pass,  at  Geba  they  have 
taken  night-quarters. 

Kamah  trembleth,  Gibeah  of  Saul  hath  fled. 

Cry  aloud,  daughter  of  Gallim,  give  ear,  Layisha, 
answer  her,  Anathoth ! 


80  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Madmenah  hath,  become  a  wanderer,  the  dwellers 
in  Gebim  have  hurried  off  (their  treasures). 

This  very  day  he  is  to  halt  in  Nob,  brandishing 
his  hand  against  the  mountain  of  the  daughter  of 
Zion; 

Behold,  the  Lord,  Yahweh  Sebaoth,  loppeth  off 
the  boughs  with  frightful  crash, 

And  the  high  in  stature  are  hewn  down,  and  the 
lofty,  they  shall  be  laid  low ; 

And  he  shall  cut  down  the  thickets  of  the  forest 
with  iron,  and  Lebanon  by  a  mighty  one  shall  fall ! 


There  is  space  now  for  only  a  word  about 
the  specific  Messianic  predictions  ascribed  to 
Isaiah  —  those  in  which  the  expectation  of  a 
great  deliverance  involves  a  future  king  to  be 
the  great  deliverer.  These,  too,  are  rooted, 
more  or  less  distinctly,  in  the  present,  and 
their  expression  is  framed  for  effect  upon  the 
prophet's  own  contemporaries.  Scholars  gen- 
erally hold  that  the  most  definite  and  stirring 
of  them  all  found  its  point  of  contact  with  the 
national  life  in  the  devastation  of  northeast 
Israel  by  Tiglathpileser  III.,  in  the  invasion 
of  734,  which  cost  Pekah  his  throne  and  his 
life.  It  was  then  that  Isaiah,  keenly  feeling 
the  blow  which  had  fallen  upon  the  sister 
kingdom,  recognizing,  indeed,  the  divine  mis- 


Isaiah  as  a  Preacher  31 

sion  of  Assyria,  but  believing  this  to  be  only 
temporary,  and  confident  that  the  haughty 
invader  must  be  overthrown,  despairing  of  any 
leadership  in  that  overthrow  on  the  part  of  the 
weak,  timorous,  and  self-willed  Ahaz,  received 
power  to  announce  the  birth  of  the  child  who 
was  to  conquer  all  enemies,  set  his  people  free, 
and  secure  them  peace.  All  the  world  knows 
the  verses  now,  and  gives  them  a  comprehen- 
sive and  spiritual  interpretation,  but  the  polit- 
ical conditions  of  Isaiah's  time  have  left  an 
indelible  mark  upon  them,  and  we  can  inter- 
pret them  largely  because  he  compressed  into 
them  so  much  intensity  of  patriotic  feeling 
and  so  much  confidence  of  faith.  I  am  speak- 
ing of  the  great  prediction  of  ix.  1-6,  ending 
with  the  stanza  (vv.  4-6) : 

Yea,  every  boot  of  the  man  that  stampeth  with 
noise,  and  garment  rolled  in  blood  — 

It  shall  be  for  burning,  —  fuel  for  fire. 

For  a  child  is  born  to  us,  a  son  is  given  to  us, 
and  the  dominion  shall  come  upon  his  shoulder, 

And  his  name  shall  be  called  Wonder  of  a  Coun- 
sellor, God-hero,  Possessor  of  Spoil,  Prince  of 
Peace ! 

For  the  increase  of  the  dominion  and  for  peace 
without  end,  upon  the  throne  of  David  and  over 
his  kingdom, 


32  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Establishing  it  and  sustaining  it,  by  justice  and 
by  righteousness,  from  now,  even  forever ! 

The  zeal  of  Yahweh  Sebaoth  will  perform  this. 

This  portrayal  of  Isaiah's  prophetic  work 
has  been  meagre  enough.  Into  some  regions 
of  his  thought  it  has  not  been  possible  even 
to  enter.  But  the  illustrations  given  are  suf- 
ficient to  establish  his  greatness — greatness  as 
an  artist  and  greatness  as  a  preacher.  His 
sermons  are  poems,  in  vi^hich  poetic  fire  and 
skill  are  wholly  genuine  and  wholly  at  the 
service  of  his  moral  integrity  and  his  spiritual 
insight,  so  that  through  them  God  revealed  his 
will  to  the  men  of  Isaiah's  time,  and  has  re- 
vealed his  will  afresh  to  the  successive  genera- 
tions since  Isaiah  died. 


Ill 

THE  APOSTLE  PAUL 


Ill 

THE   APOSTLE   PAUL 

BY   THE    REV.    GEORGE    MATHESON,    D.D. 

The  figures  of  the  New  Testament  are  rep- 
resentative men;  each  stands  for  some  phase 
of  the  soul.  Matthew  is  the  type  of  conserva- 
tism, "that  it  might  be  fulfilled."  Mark  is 
the  symbol  of  present  action,  "straightway 
he  commanded."  Luke  is  the  embodiment  of 
human  sympathy.  John  is  the  love  of  the 
ideal.  Nathaniel  is  the  child  ;  Nicodemus  is 
the  student ;  Peter  is  the  youth  ;  Thomas  is 
the  reflective  and  somewhat  careworn  man. 
No  portrait  in  this  gallery  is  without  its  special 
significance. 

What  is  Paul  ?  It  seems  at  first  sight  equiv- 
alent to  asking  "  What  is  Shakespeare  ?  "  It 
appears  as  if  the  only  word  which  would  de- 
scribe him  is  myriad-mindedness.  And  yet,  to 
my  mind,  the  remarkable  feature  about  Paul 
is  not  variety  but  unity  —  not  the  diversity  of 
35 


36  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

his  experiences,  but  the  one  thread  which  con- 
nects them.  If  I  were  asked  to  state  in  a 
single  phrase  what  Paul  represents,  I  would 
say,  "The  pilgrim's  progress."  I  would  say 
that  his  life,  as  indicated  in  the  historical  order 
of  his  epistles,  describes  the  normal  course 
through  which  each  Christian  is  to  journey  in 
his  passage  from  the  scene  of  shadows  into  the 
happy  land  of  Beulah. 

I  say,  "the  normal  course."  But  the  point 
I  wish  to  emphasize  is  that  to  Paul  himself  it 
was  very  abnormal.  He  was  the  initiator  of 
that  which  has  since  become  chronic  and  habit- 
ual. The  course  proposed  for  the  Old  Testa- 
ment pilgrims  was  the  very  opposite  of  that 
prescribed  for  Paul.  Theirs  was  a  march  from 
the  desert  into  the  promised  land  ;  Paul's  was 
a  progress  from  the  promised  land  into  the 
desert.  They  began  with  the  valley,  passed 
up  to  the  plain,  and  ended  on  the  height ;  he 
began  with  the  height,  passed  down  to  the 
plain,  and  ended  with  the  valley.  They  pro- 
ceeded from  law  to  love  ;  he  descended  from 
love  to  law.  They  set  up  their  ladder  on  the 
earth  and  tried  to  reach  the  heavens  ;  he  fixed 
his  ladder  in  the  heavens  and  tried  to  reach 
the  earth. 


The  Apostle  Paul  37 

It  was  not  only  from  the  men  of  the  Ohl 
Testament  that  Paul  was  thus  distinguished ; 
his  experience  was  equally  marked  out  from 
the  original  Apostles  —  the  men  of  transition 
between  the  old  and  the  new.  These  pro- 
ceeded from  the  human  to  the  divine.  They 
gazed  first  on  the  Christ  of  the  flesh.  They 
followed  the  steps  of  the  Son  of  man  from  the 
cradle  to  the  cross ;  when  the  croAvn  came, 
their  pilgrimage  was  over.  But  Paul  began 
with  the  crown.  His  first  sight  of  the  Christ 
was  the  Christ  glorified.  He  knew  the  power 
of  His  resurrection  before  he  felt  the  fellow- 
ship of  His  sufferings.  His  progress  was  a 
progress  backward.  He  had  begun  with  the 
light  of  immortality ;  he  had  to  retrace  his 
steps  to  take  up  the  life  of  time.  It  was  an 
abnormal  experience,  though  it  was  to  become 
universal.  He  was  the  first  of  the  new  regime, 
and  for  a  while  the  only  one.  He  says  he  was 
"born  out  of  due  time."  I  understand  him  to 
mean,  not  that  he  was  born  too  late,  but  that 
he  was  born  too  soon.  He  claimed  to  have  a 
vision  of  the  Christian  life  which  was  above 
his  age,  before  his  day,  in  advance  of  his  con- 
temporaries. He  claimed  to  be  the  follower 
of  One  whose  progress  had  been  from  heaven 


88  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

to  earth,  who  had  begun  with  the  form  of 
God  and  ended  with  the  form  of  a  ser- 
vant, who  had  emptied  himself  step  by  step 
into  sympathy  with  things  beneath  him, 
and  paused  not,  rested  not,  until  he  had 
made  the  human  divine.  The  progress  of 
St.  Paul  was  like  that  of  his  Master  —  a  prog- 
ress downward. 

He  begins  in  the  air  —  in  the  other  world. 
He  has  been  caught  up  to  meet  his  Lord,  and 
the  earth  disappears  from  his  view.  He  sees 
nothing  but  the  second  advent ;  he  hears  noth- 
ing but  the  last  trump.  All  perspective  has 
vanished  ;  the  end  is  at  the  door.  Christ  is 
coming ;  in  a  little  while  he  will  be  here. 
What  is  this  world  to  any  man  ?  Before  his 
descending  shout  of  triumph  its  proudest 
pomps  shall  melt  away.  Before  the  first  gaze 
of  the  man  of  Tarsus  there  floated  the  form  of 
only  one  Christ  —  the  Christ  of  resurrection. 
The  light  which  smote  him  from  heaven  put 
out  all  the  candles  of  earth.  Everything  below 
that  sun  became  a  thing  of  insignificance.  The 
kingdoms  of  the  world  and  the  glory  of  them 
vanished  like  smoke.  Their  inhabitants  be- 
came as  grasshoppers,  their  events  as  water- 
drops.     The  only  bells  heard  were   the   bells 


The  Apostle  Paul  39 

of   the   New   Jerusalem,    and   they  summoned 
all  men  to  a  cathedral  above. 

Then  there  came  a  cloud  ;  I  know  not  when, 
I  know  not  how.  I  only  know  it  was  some- 
where between  the  Thessalonians  and  the 
Galatians.  In  his  letter  to  Corinth  he  speaks 
of  it  as  a  thorn  ;  in  his  letter  to  Rome  he  de- 
scribes it  as  a  warfare  ;  both  are  introduced 
as  retrospects  of  a  dark,  and  to  some  extent 
a  surmounted,  past.  The  cause  of  the  cloud 
I  cannot  tell ;  probably  it  was  something  ex- 
ternal. But  the  main  point  is  that  it  was 
something  which  made  Paul  feel  himself  less 
ready  for  his  change.  The  second  advent 
moves  further  off ;  the  world  looms  nearer. 
He  finds  that  the  light  which  fell  upon  him 
at  Damascus  was  like  the  deluge  ;  it  had  only 
covered  the  old  world  —  not  annihilated  it. 
There  were  two  natures  within  him  —  Saul 
and  Paul.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he 
felt  thoroughly  bad.  What  right  had  he  to 
struggle  ?  Had  he  not  tasted  of  the  heavenly 
gift ;  had  he  not  seen  the  Lord  ?  Where  was 
the  blessedness  he  had  known  in  Arabia  ? 
Where  was  the  joy  with  which  he  had  written 
to  Thessalonica  ?  Where  was  the  exultation 
with  which  he  had  been  taken  up  to  the  third 


40  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

heaven  ?  What  was  this  that  had  come  to  him 
—  this  flesh  lusting  against  the  spirit,  this  law 
in  his  members  warring  against  the  law  of  his 
mind?  Was  not  this  spiritual  death?  The 
strong  soul  of  yesterday  beat  upon  his  breast 
and  cried,  "  O  wretched  man  that  I  am ! " 

Then  came  a  new  gleam  of  glory,  and  it 
came,  not  from  the  third  heaven,  but  from  the 
very  mist  into  which  Paul  had  wandered.  It 
brought  a  great  message  to  his  soul.  It  said: 
Your  seeming  fall  is  a  rise.  You  are  further 
removed  from  death  now  than  you  were  in  your 
hour  of  immediate  vision.  The  true  sign  of 
spiritual  life  is  spiritual  dissatisfaction.  There 
is  nothing  which  justifies  a  man  like  his  belief 
in  the  existence  of  a  beauty  which  he  himself 
cannot  reach. 

Paul  has  come  a  step  down  his  ladder,  which 
means  a  step  up  his  pilgrimage.  He  has  come 
nearer  to  the  earth.  He  has  passed  from  sight 
to  faith  —  from  an  ideal  of  perfect  satisfaction 
to  an  ideal  which  eludes  him  by  its  glory.  But 
already  another  step  was  preparing.  What  was 
that  glory  in  Christ  which  had  hitherto  eluded 
him?  It  was  love.  The  moment  Paul  said, 
"  I  believe  in  love,"  he  had  put  out  his  foot  for 
a  further  step  downward.     Hitherto,  however 


The  Apostle  Paul  41 

beautiful,  his  experience  had  been  mainly  per- 
sonal. He  had  found  rest  to  his  own  soul. 
But  that  is  not  the  half  of  the  Christian  life. 
Paul's  deepest  Christianity  was  yet  to  come. 
He  had  begun  with  sight ;  his  passage  from  the 
Thessalonians  to  the  Galatians  had  been  a  pas- 
sage from  sight  to  faith ;  his  passage  from  the 
Galatians  to  the  Corinthians  is  a  passage  from 
faith  to  love.  You  say  '-it  was  a  very  short 
time  in  which  to  make  such  a  transition." 
Yes;  but  the  transitions  of  God's  Spirit  are, 
in  their  last  result,  almost  momentary.  I  can 
well-nigh  hear  the  very  hour  strike  in  which  he 
passed  over  the  line.  The  man  who  wrote  the 
magnificent  hymn  of  the  thirteenth  chapter  of 
1st  Corinthians  has  made  a  leap ;  and  when  he 
touches  the  ground  it  is  no  longer  the  old 
ground,  but  a  plane  higher  in  God's  sight, 
because  lower  in  the  sight  of  man. 

Can  you  fail  to  observe  that  from  this  time 
onward  the  teaching  of  Paul  takes  another 
channel?  It  becomes  less  personal,  more  hu- 
manitarian. Even  his  view  of  predestination 
is  to  my  mind  the  result  of  his  new  breadth, 
not  of  his  old  narrowness.  He  sees  that  a 
mother's  love  is  always  predestinating  love. 
When  a  mother  foreknows  that   her  child  is 


42  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

about  to  come  into  the  world,  even  before  its 
birth,  she  conforms  it  to  an  image  ;  she  figures 
to  herself  what  she  would  like  it  to  be.  That 
is,  in  my  opinion,  the  metaphor  which  glittered 
before  the  eyes  of  the  great  Apostle  when  he 
proclaimed  that  the  All- Father  had  predestined 
his  children  "  to  be  conformed  to  the  image  of 
his  Son."  Divine  Love,  foreknowing  that  its 
children  were  about  to  be  born,  ere  ever  they 
had  a  character,  ere  ever  they  had  a  being, 
planned  for  them  a  destiny  of  glory,  figured 
them  in  the  likeness  of  the  most  beautiful  thing 
it  knew,  and  said  within  itself,  "  I  baptize  them 
into  the  name  of  Jesus."  Nay,  was  not  bap- 
tism into  Christ's  name  itself  simply  the  pre- 
destination of  love  —  the  expression  in  the  heart 
of  the  Divine  Parent  of  a  great,  an  unquench- 
able desire  that  the  new  convert  should  rise 
to  heights  altogether  unearthly,  and  attain  to 
nothing  less  than  the  image  of  the  Son? 

Paul  has  now  reached  what  he  himself  calls 
the  glory  of  the  cross.  He  had  begun  with 
the  crown  —  the  sight  of  the  Christ  of  resur- 
rection. He  had  passed  from  sight  to  faith  — 
the  vision  of  an  ideal  which  was  beyond  him, 
and  after  which  he  must  strive.  He  has  now 
come  from  faith  to  love  —  the  perception  that 


The  Apostle  Paul  43 

others  have  an  ideal  as  well  as  he.  Has  Paul 
now  arrived  at  the  terminus  ?  No.  He  has 
reached  the  knowledge  that  the  cross  is  the 
glory  of  God ;  but  there  is  a  step  beyond  even 
that  —  he  must  ''  rejoice  in  hope  of  the  glory  of 
God."  Faith  in  Christ  was  the  parent  of  love, 
because  it  was  the  belief  in  love ;  but  Paul 
makes  the  further  discovery  that  love  is  the 
parent  of  hope.  He  says,  in  so  many  words, 
that  the  reason  why  he  is  not  ashamed  to  hope 
is  that  the  love  of  God  is  shed  abroad  in  his 
heart  (Romans  v.  5).  He  was  of  a  spirit  not 
naturally  sanguine ;  I  have  heard  him  called  a 
pessimist.  In  his  Epistle  to  the  Thessalonians 
his  main  hope  for  the  world  seems  to  have  been 
that  a  divine  power  is  keeping  things  from 
being  worse ;  and  truly  he  was  right.  But 
when  the  enthusiasm  of  the  cross  burst  upon 
him,  hope  had  a  deeper  revelation  to  bring. 
We  again  hear  the  clock  strike  as  he  passes  the 
line.  He  had  spoken  of  justification  by  faith  ; 
he  had  called  love  "  a  more  excellent  way " ; 
he  was  now  to  cry,  "We  are  saved  by  hope."" 
Love  was  the  parent  of  hope.  No  doubt  the 
parent  was  greater  than  the  child  ;  yet  the  child 
was  indispensable  to  the  support  of  the  parent. 
And,  with  this  latest  birth  in  the  soul  of  Paul, 


44  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

there  comes  a  widening  of  his  horizon.  There 
is  nothing  which  tells  such  tales  as  a  letter, 
and  often  most  in  the  things  it  does  not  say. 
Already  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  we  begin 
to  catch  breezes  —  currents  of  air  which  apprise 
us  that  there  is  an  opening  somewhere  not  far 
away.  As  we  advance  beyond  the  boundaries 
of  that  Epistle,  the  current  freshens.  He  tells 
the  Philippians  in  express  terms  that  the  pur- 
pose of  God's  heart  was  that  every  man  in 
every  place  should  bend  his  knee  in  prayer. 
A  few  miles  more  and  we  are  out  in  the  open, 
with  the  gusts  of  the  great  sea  around  us.  As 
we  pass  from  the  coasts  of  Philippi  we  are  in  a 
new  element  —  an  element  of  breadth,  I  had 
almost  said  of  secularism,  an  element  which  in- 
creases in  strength  from  the  outpouring  of  the 
letter  to  Ephesus,  until  those  notes  of  pastoral 
counsel  which  speak  the  last  farewell. 

What  is  this  new  element  in  Paul  ?  I  have 
called  it  secularism ;  it  would  be  more  correct 
to  call  it  the  extension  of  the  sacred.  Hith- 
erto, Paul  had  seen  in  Christ  merely  the  head 
of  a  body  of  members.  But  now  he  began  to 
see  more.  Christ  was  the  head  of  the  Church, 
but  was  he  not  also  head  of  the  State  —  of  all 
principalities  and  powers  ?     Was  not  this  mag- 


The  Apostle  Paul  46 

nificent  Roman  Empire,  however  unconsciously 
to  itself,  already  the  kingdom  of  God?  Was 
not  Csesar  as  much  the  servant  of  Christ  as  he 
was,  albeit  he  knew  it  not  ?  Was  this  world  a 
secular  system  at  all  ?  Was  the  distinction  be- 
tween Church  and  State  a  real  one  ?  would  not 
the  fulness  of  time  show  that  all  things  had 
been  "  gathered  together  in  Christ "  ?  As  he 
approached  Rome,  and  as  the  spectacle  of  Roman 
unity  swam  before  his  eyes,  he  asked  himself  if 
Christ's  kingdom  would  be  less  incorporative 
than  this  kingdom  of  man.  He  asked  himself  if 
this  Roman  unity  was  really  the  work  of  Csesar, 
if  it  was  not  itself  only  a  product  of  that  divine 
order  which  had  arranged  thrones  and  princi- 
palities and  powers.  So  asking,  so  thinking, 
Paul  stepped  into  the  world  again.  He  came 
back  to  the  haunts  from  which  his  conversion 
had  lifted  him ;  he  claimed  them  for  Christ. 
He  found  the  land  of  Beulah  on  the  earthly 
side.  For  the  second  time  in  his  life  he  preached 
the  things  which  once  had  been  alien  to  him. 
Very  beautiful  to  my  mind  is  the  passage, 
Ephesians  iii.  14  and  15,  in  which  he  declares 
that  the  idea  of  family  life  is  modelled  after  the 
relationship  of  the  Father  in  heaven.  Beauti- 
ful, because  I  think  there  was  a  time  when  Paul 


46  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

would  not  have  said  it  —  a  time  of  storm  and 
stress  below,  of  dazzling  light  above,  when  the 
radiance  of  the  heavenly  vision  had  blinded 
him  to  earthly  ties.  Beautiful,  too,  because  it 
is  no  accidental  utterance.  It  is  the  keynote 
of  his  latest  song.  If  his  morning  carol  is  to 
the  Christ  of  the  heavens,  his  evening  lay  is  to 
the  Christ  of  the  home ;  if  he  begins  with  love 
on  the  wing,  he  ends  with  love  in  the  nest. 
All  his  latest  notes  are  of  home. 

I  cannot  better  conclude  than  by  placing  side 
by  side  Paul's  earliest  and  latest  ideals  of  Chris- 
tian joy  —  the  one  from  his  first  letter,  the  other 
almost  from  his  last.  He  says  to  the  Thessa- 
lonians,  ''  We  shall  be  caught  up  together  in  the 
clouds  to  meet  the  Lord  in  the  air" ;  he  says  to 
Titus,  "  The  grace  that  bringeth  salvation  hath 
appeared  unto  all  men,  teaching  to  live  soberly, 
righteously,  and  godly  in  this  present  world." 
Do  I  say  that  at  the  close  of  his  pilgrimage  he 
has  found  his  first  experience  to  be  untrue? 
No  ;  rather  for  the  first  time  has  he  discovered 
its  real  value.  He  has  found  that  the  advan- 
tage of  going  up  is  the  new  strength  we  get 
for  coming  down.  The  bird  that  at  dawn  sings 
in  the  uplands  may  be  heard  in  the  afternoon  on 
the  ledge  of  an  office  wall ;  but  the  song  on  the 


The  Apostle  Paul  47 

office  wall  has  been  learned  in  the  uplands. 
Moses  had  the  vision  of  Nebo  before  coming 
down  to  the  common  lot  of  men  ;  but  the  vision 
of  Nebo  helped  him  to  come  down.  Paul's 
first  revelation  was  the  sight  of  immortality, 
but  the  sight  of  immortality  gave  value  to  the 
earth  ;  and  he  who  began  with  the  vision  of 
the  ascending  Christ  was  bound  sooner  or  later 
to  recognize  the  possibilities  of  "this  present 
world." 


IV 

CLEMENT   OF  ALEXANDRIA 


IV 
CLEMENT   OF  ALEXANDRIA 

BY   THE    REV.    MARCUS   DODS,    D.D. 

Titus  Flavius  Clemens,  commonly  known 
as  Clement  of  Alexandria,  may  be  accepted  as 
the  representative  of  Greek  Theology.  In  some 
respects  either  Origen  or  Athanasius  might 
more  suitably  stand  as  its  exponent,  but  Clem- 
ent has  the  advantage  of  being  earlier  than 
either  of  these  great  theologians,  and  of  being 
Origen's  teacher  and  predecessor  as  head  of 
the  catechetical  school  of  Alexandria.  "  He 
stands  in  the  same  relation  to  those  that  came 
after  him  that  Augustine  sustained  to  the 
Latin  theology  of  the  Middle  Ages,  or  Luther 
and  Calvin  to  the  later  Protestantism." 

Of  his  personal  history  little  is  known.  He 
wrote  in  the  reign  of  Severus  (193-211  A.D.), 
and  the  probability  is  that  he  was  born  in 
Athens  about  the  middle  of  the  second  cen- 
tury. In  quest  of  truth  he  travelled  in  Italy, 
51 


52  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Syria,  and  Asia  Minor,  until  finally  he  "  caught 
the  true  Sicilian  bee,"  Pantsenus  in  Alexandria. 
In  a  year  or  two  afterwards  he  was  ordained 
a  presbyter  of  the  Church,  and  succeeded  Pan- 
tsenus  as  Master  of  the  Catechetical  School. 
His  residence  in  Alexandria  undoubtedly  had 
a  great  influence,  not  only  on  the  form  of  his 
writings,  but  on  his  thought,  and  especially  on 
his  attitude  towards  philosophy.  In  this  mag- 
nificent, busy,  and  dissipated  city,  every  vice 
of  heathenism  and  the  most  sumptuous  and 
seductive  idolatrous  worship  were  daily  ob- 
truded on  the  notice  of  Clement.  Everything 
that  paganism  had  to  attract,  to  delude,  to 
bind,  was  matter  of  familiar  observation  to 
the  man  who  was  destined  to  become,  not  only 
the  most  voluminous,  but  in  many  respects  the 
most  sagacious  and  convincing,  of  Christian 
apologists. 

In  Alexandria  Clement  had  also  opportunity 
to  acquire  that  learning  which  was  essential  to 
qualify  him  to  meet  the  mental  condition  of  re- 
ligious inquirers  in  the  second  century.  It  was 
at  least  as  important  to  gain  to  the  new  faith 
the  philosophers  and  scholars  of  the  museum 
as  the  mechanics  of  the  docks  and  building- 
yards,   or   the   warehouse   porters.     His   office 


Clement  of  Alexandria  53 

as  teacher  of  the  Christian  school  exposed  him 
to  the  interrogation  of  all  who  had  difficulties 
about  the  new  religion.  The  cavils  which 
were  concocted  by  the  wits  of  the  museum, 
the  theories  which  were  broached  in  the  dining- 
hall  of  the  professors,  would  naturally  find 
their  way  to  the  ears  of  Clement.  And  so 
he  drew  around  the  young  plants  which  were 
under  his  charge  the  hedge,  as  he  calls  it,  of 
a  learning  superior  to  that  of  the  assailants. 
Excepting  Athenseus,  probably  no  ancient  writer 
could  be  named  who  cites  four  hundred  au- 
thors, but  a  larger  number  than  this  must 
measure  the  reading  of  Clement.  This  great 
learning  he  used,  not  for  display,  but  as  a 
missionary  engine.  His  three  great  books, 
the  "  Protreptikos,"  the  "  Paidagogos,"  and  the 
"  Stromateis,"  written  respectively  for  the  hea- 
then, the  catechumen,  and  the  Christian  Gnos- 
tic, all  bear  witness  to  his  zeal  no  less  than  to 
his  knowledge. 

In  the  apologetic  of  Clement  we  become 
aware  that  his  conciliatory  attitude  is  the  re- 
sult not  merely  of  geniality  of  disposition,  but 
of  principle — the  principle,  to  state  it  in  his 
own  words,  that  "  there  is  one  river  of  truth, 
but  many  streams  fall  into  it  on  this  side  and 


54  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

on  that."  He  believed  that  Philosophy  had 
been  in  its  measure  a  "schoolmaster"  to  the 
Greeks,  as  the  Law  had  been  to  the  Jews ; 
and  that  even  after  the  Advent  it  served  as 
a  preparatory  training  which  might  lead  men 
to  Christianity.  By  "philosophy,"  as  he  is 
careful  to  explain,  he  did  not  mean  the  teach- 
ing of  any  particular  school,  the  Platonic, 
Aristotelian,  or  Epicurean,  but  whatever  had 
been  well  said  by  any  sect  "which  teaches 
righteousness  along  with  science."  As  Justin 
had  taught  that  the  Logos  had  been  the  re- 
vealer  of  truth  to  the  heathen  philosophers, 
so  Clement  maintains  that  philosophy  is  God's 
gift  to  men  "for  the  sake  of  those  who  not 
otherwise  than  by  its  means  would  abstain 
from  what  is  evil." 

This  catholic  tendency  which  is  so  marked 
a  feature  of  the  second  century  was  no  doubt 
stimulated,  if  not  wholly  caused,  by  the  uni- 
versalism  of  the  Empire.  As  Professor  Allen 
says,  "  The  necessity  of  enforcing  one  com- 
mon method  of  legal  procedure  upon  a  variety 
of  peoples,  each  with  its  own  conception  of 
justice  and  of  its  practical  administration,  gave 
rise  to  the  comprehensive  spirit  of  Roman  law 
and  the  endeavour  to  ground  it  in  the  nature  of 


Clement  of  Alexandria  55 

man.  A  similar  necessity  gave  rise  to  similar 
efforts  in  the  sphere  of  religious  thought." 
The  necessities  of  Clement's  position  also  drove 
him  to  adopt  his  liberal  views  and  methods. 
He  expressly  affirms  that  he  felt  himself  im- 
pelled to  become  a  Greek  to  the  Greeks,  and 
that  in  order  to  remove  their  difficulties  he 
must  first  feel  them,  must  recognize  the  truth 
they  held  before  he  could  add  to  it,  and  must 
see  their  error  from  their  own  point  of  view. 
Never,  on  the  other  hand,  does  he  allow  it  to 
be  supposed  that  he  considers  philosophy  to  be 
a  sufficient  guide.  Christ  alone  possesses  the 
whole  truth.  There  is  only  One  who  can  per- 
fectly satisfy,  only  One  who  can  heal,  purify, 
and  restore  to  God. 

In  this  teaching  Clement  is  the  type  not  only 
of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  phases  of  early 
Christianity,  but  he  is  the  representative  of  a 
tendency  or  mental  attitude  which  reappears 
in  all  ages  of  the  history  of  Christendom.  It 
would  appear  from  unmistakable  signs,  in  our 
own  day,  that  the  Church  has  not  yet  made 
up  its  mind  to  adopt  Clement's  theory  of  the 
relation  of  non-Christian  religions  and  philoso- 
phies to  Christianity.  The  Bampton  Lecturer 
for   1894   (Mr.  Illingworth),  speaking  of   the 


56  Prophets  of  the  Ohristiafi  Faith 

non- Christian  sacred  books  of  the  world,  says : 
"  With  all  their  imperfection  and  manifest  in- 
feriority, there  is  that  in  them  which  we  can 
well  believe  to  have  been  a  vehicle  of  divine 
teaching  to  the  nations  they  addressed,  and,  if 
so,  to  have  been  inspired,  as  their  possessors 
believed."  And  in  confirmation  of  his  state- 
ment he  quotes  Clement,  who  speaks  to  the 
same  effect :  "  Perchance  philosophy  was  given 
to  the  Greeks,  directly  and  primarily,  till  the 
Lord  should  call  the  Greeks."  And  again, 
''  The  barbarian  and  Greek  philosophy  has 
torn  off  a  fragment,  not  from  the  mythology 
of  Dionysus,  but  from  the  theology  of  the 
Eternal  Word."  Yet  the  man  who  has  done 
more  for  India  and  for  Christianity  in  India 
than  any  other  during  this  generation  has  been 
severely  taken  to  task  for  pointing  out  that 
Hinduism  has  in  it  elements  of  good  and  a 
contribution  to  make  to  the  Church  and  to 
the  world. 

St.  Paul's  method  of  dealing  with  the  heathen, 
his  addresses  at  Lystra  and  at  Athens,  should 
have  made  it  impossible  to  deny  that  God  has 
been  training  Gentile  as  well  as  Jew  for  Christ. 
And  probably  the  idea  that  heathenism  and  all 
its  works  are  wholly  of  the  devil  is  pretty  well 


Clement  of  Alexandria  57 

obsolete.  But  there  is  still  prevalent  a  lurking 
fear  tliat  in  recognizing  the  good  that  is  out- 
side Christianity  the  supremacy  and  essential 
distinction  of  our  religion  may  be  lost.  Instead 
of  levelling  up,  a  process  of  levelling  down  may 
be  initiated.  And  even  although  this  fear  must 
not  be  allowed  to  blind  us  to  the  education  of 
the  world  as  a  whole,  and  to  the  part  played  by 
the  various  races  in  that  education,  yet  there 
are  undoubtedly  dangers  to  be  avoided.  For 
example,  we  see  that  in  Clement  this  approxi- 
mation of  Christianity  to  philosophy  caused 
him  all  but  uniformly  to  present  Christ  as  a 
teacher.  With  him  redemption  is  little  more 
than  the  reception  of  Christ's  teaching,  the  soul 
being  purified  and,  in  the  Platonic  sense,  re- 
deemed by  the  truth.  Fate  comes  to  be  noth- 
ing more  than  the  mental  acceptance  of  the 
revelation  of  Christ.  The  saving  power  of 
Christ  consists  in  his  manifestation  of  the 
Father's  love.  The  idea  of  a  redemption  by 
expiation  is  quite  in  the  background,  and  may 
easily  be  overlooked.  Christ  saves  by  the 
light  he  brings.  Atonement  is  effected,  not  by 
altering  the  relation  of  God  to  man,  but  by 
disclosing  the  actual  relation  and  attitude  of 
the  Father  towards  his  erring  children.     All 


58  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

who  now  hold  that  our  redemption  is  accom- 
plished by  the  knowledge  of  God  which  Christ 
brings  may  claim  Clement  as  their  theological 
ancestor. 

The  doctrines  in  which  Clement's  character- 
istic thinking  most  conspicuously  emerges  are 
his  teaching  about  God,  man,  punishment,  and 
the  higher  or  Gnostic  life.  In  his  doctrine  of 
God  Clement  followed  the  teaching  of  his  phil- 
osophical progenitors,  Plato  and  Philo.  And, 
indeed,  the  whole  trend  of  belief  in  the  second 
century  was  towards  the  transcendence  of  God. 
The  impossibility  of  his  holding  any  direct 
living  relationship  with  the  world  was  freely 
taught  by  the  Gnostics.  And,  in  opposing 
Gnosticism,  Clement  did  not  repudiate  the  idea 
which  lay  at  its  root,  although  he  evaded  its 
consequences.  With  him  God  is  the  Absolute, 
the  Monad.  You  cannot  apply  to  Him  the 
terms  genus,  difference,  species,  atom,  number, 
accident,  subject,  whole,  part,  figure  ;  nor  can 
any  name  be  properly  or  essentially  given  Him. 
But  while  thus  exhausting  language  to  empha- 
size the  remoteness  and  incomprehensibility  of 
God,  Clement  yet  believed  in  his  immanence. 
All  things  and  persons  are  penetrated  by  the 
Divine  Logos,  the  Son  who  is  the  consciousness 


Clement  of  Alexandria  59 

of  the  Father.  Through  the  Logos  God  has 
dwelt  with  men,  has  guided  and  educated  the 
race,  has  been,  in  all  ages  and  races,  anticipat- 
ing the  Incarnation. 

The  Gnostics  believed  in  a  God  who  was 
good  but  not  just.  Accordingly  Clement  de- 
votes a  part  of  his  "Paidagogos"  to  demonstrate 
that  goodness  and  justice  are  not  incompatible. 
"  The  justice  of  God  is  good,  and  his  goodness 
just."  And,  hence,  instead  of  holding  with  the 
Gnostics  that  punishment  was  the  work  of  a 
subordinate  and  evil  God,  Clement  holds  that 
all  punishment  is  remedial  and  for  the  sake  of 
the  punished.  In  this  also  he  followed  Plato, 
but,  as  Dr.  Bigg  has  clearly  shown,  unad- 
visedly; for,  whereas  Plato  held  that  sin  is  the 
result  of  ignorance  and  is  therefore  a  disease, 
Clement  held  that  sin  is  the  product  of  will. 
If  sin  is  a  disease,  punishment  may  be  remedial. 
But  if  sin  is,  as  the  Alexandrines  held  it  to  be, 
rebellion  against  God  and  against  Law,  the 
case  is  altered.  *'  Punishment  is  the  safeguard 
of  Law,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  unity,  life,  and 
welfare  of  the  whole,  and  of  the  individual  in 
and  through  the  whole.  It  does  not  aim  at 
amendment,  but  at  the  maintenance  of  that 
Law,  which  alone  can  amend."     On  Clement's 


60  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

theory  of  punishment,  also,  it  is  difficult  to  find 
the  full  significance  of  the  death  of  Christ,  or 
even  to  perceive  its  necessity. 

In  the  characteristics  of  Clement's  theology 
now  indicated  many  Christians  of  our  own  time 
will  find  their  prototype  and  legitimization,  but 
it  will  be  less  obvious  where  contemporary 
analogies  are  to  be  found  for  the  teaching 
which  was  most  peculiar  to  him,  his  inculcation 
of  a  lower  and  higher  grade  of  Christian  life. 
No  doubt  we  everywhere  find  that  practically 
Christians  are  divided  into  those  who  take 
their  Christianity  seriously  and  those  who  do 
not,  and  we  also  find  some  popular  forms  of 
teaching  which  might  be  construed  into  a  belief 
that  there  are  lesser  and  greater  mysteries  into 
which  Christians  can  be  initiated.  But  in 
Clement  we  find  the  distinction  between  the 
ordinary  believer  and  the  Gnostic  or  advanced 
Christian  elaborated  and  formulated.  He  be- 
lieves the  distinction  to  be  justified  by  St. 
Paul's  distinction  between  the  babes  who  re- 
quire to  be  fed  with  milk  and  the  adult  or 
spiritual  who  can  use  solid  food.  The  Gnostic 
is  distinguished  from  the  common  believer  by 
many  characteristics ;  he  acts  from  the  prin- 
ciple of  love,  the  common  believer  from  fear  or 


Clement  of  Alexandria  61 

hope.  The  perfection  of  the  former  consists  in 
doing  good,  of  the  latter  in  abstinence  from 
evil.  The  Gnostic  prays  only  in  thought ;  his 
excellence  consists,  not  in  controlling  his  de- 
sires and  wishes  and  passions,  but  in  not  having 
them ;  in  him  the  struggle  between  inclination 
and  the  sense  of  duty  is  past.  The  Gnostic  is 
a  king ;  nay,  he  becomes  a  god.  His  appella- 
tion of  "Gnostic"  is  justified  by  Clement's 
theory  that  "knowledge  is  superior  to  faith," 
that  "  through  knowledge  faith  is  perfected,  as 
through  it  alone  the  believer  becomes  perfect." 
"  Faith  is  a  compendious  knowledge  of  things 
which  are  of  urgent  necessity;  knowledge,  a 
firm  and  valid  demonstration  of  things  received 
through  faith."  The  final  state  of  the  Gnostic 
is  perpetual  contemplation  of  God.  "The 
Gnostic  soul,  in  the  grandeur  of  contemplation, 
embraces  not  the  divine  in  a  mirror  or  through 
a  glass,  but  feasts  eternally  upon  the  vision  in 
all  its  clearness  —  that  vision  with  which  the 
soul,  smitten  with  boundless  love,  can  never  be 
satiated  —  and  enjoys  inexhaustible  gladness 
for  endless  ages,  honoured  by  a  permanent  con- 
tinuance in  all  excellence." 

Here,  it  will  be  obvious,  we  have  a  strange 
combination  of  Paulinism,  Gnosticism,  Mysti- 


62  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

cism,  and  Stoicism.  The  relief  and  quickening 
which  Stoicism  brought  to  many  of  the  truest 
souls  in  the  Roman  world  proves  that  it  does, 
in  a  large  if  not  in  a  perfect  measure,  satisfy 
human  instincts  and  cravings.  Mysticism  bap- 
tizes it  without  enforcing  that  element  in  Chris- 
tianity which  sanctifies  work  and  commonplace 
people.  That  a  state  of  absolute  superiority 
to  pleasure  and  pain  can  be  reached,  that  this 
condition  of  ''apathy"  can  be  attained  by  the 
contemplation  of  God,  and  that  this  is  the 
perfect  bliss  and  eternal  state  of  the  soul  — 
these  are  the  main  contentions  of  Mysticism. 
The  superiority  of  the  Gnostic  to  the  common 
believer  is  the  very  point  which  Bossuet  saw  to 
be  the  foundation  of  all  Madame  Guyon's  error. 
"  The  doctrines  which  you  advance,  Madame, 
involve  the  fact  of  an  inward  experience  above 
the  common  experience  of  Christians."  But 
anything  which  even  seems  to  throw  a  slight 
on  the  Christianity  of  the  uneducated  and  toil- 
ing millions,  or  of  the  men  who  spend  them- 
selves in  active  efforts  for  the  promotion  of 
Christ's  kingdom,  is  earnestly  to  be  depre- 
cated. Indeed,  we  have  a  personal  interest  in 
maintaining  the  sufficiency  of  the  lower  Chris- 
tian life ;  for,  as  Dr.  Bigg  appositely  remarks : 


Clement  of  Alexandria  63 

"  To  most  of  us  probably  Miss  Rossetti's  words 
go  home : 

"  We  are  of  those  who  tremble  at  Thy  Word, 

Who  faltering  walk  in  darkness  towards   our  | 

close  ! 

Of  mortal  life,  by  terrors  curbed  and  spurred  —  ! 

We  are  of  those.  I 

1 

"Not  ours  the  heart  Thy  loftiest  love  hath  stirred,  j 

Not  such  as  we  Thy  lily  and  Thy  rose, 

Yet,  Hope  of  those  who  hope  with  hope  deferred  —  i 

We  are  of  those."  ! 


V 

ST.  AUGUSTINE  AS  A  PROPHET 


V 

ST.    AUGUSTINE  AS  A   PROPHET 

BY   THE    REV.   ARTHUR    C.   MCGIFFERT,    D.D., 
Profensor  of  Church  History  in  Union  Theological  Seminary. 

Every  true  prophet  looks  both  forward  and 
backward  —  is  at  once  parent  of  the  future  and 
child  of  the  past.  Only  as  his  life  draws  its 
nourishment  from  the  world  in  which  he  lives, 
with  all  its  heritage  of  bygone  ages,  can  he 
stamp  himself  upon  his  own  generation  and 
mould  the  life  of  generations  yet  to  come.  Not 
one  in  the  world's  long  line  of  "  speakers  for 
God  "  whose  divine  message  has  not  borne  the 
imprint  of  earthly  traditions  and  conditions  — 
often  of  the  organs  at  whose  reformation  or 
eradication  that  message  was  aimed!  Indeed, 
the  influence  of  every  such  prophet  has  been 
measured  always,  not  alone  by  the  divine  truth 
which  he  has  lived  and  spoken,  but  also  by  the 
degree  to  which  the  thought  and  feeling  of  his 
fellows  have  found  utterance  in  him.  He  has 
67 


68  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

spoken,  not  simply  to  his  age,  but  for  it,  if  he 
has  spoken  with  power  and  effect.  It  should, 
therefore,  not  cause  surprise  if  in  the  thinking 
and  teaching  of  Augustine,  who  for  fourteen 
centuries  has  influenced  where  he  has  not  dom- 
inated the  thought  of  Western  Christendom, 
there  should  voice  themselves  along  with  his 
own  peculiar  message  the  prevailing  tendencies 
of  his  time.  It  is  hardly  just  to  hold  him 
responsible  for  all  that  he  received  from  his 
age  as  well  as  for  all  that  he  gave  it,  and  it 
is  curiously  unhistoric  to  overlook,  as  is  often 
done,  that  which  was  truly  his  own,  and  to 
stamp  with  his  name  that  alone  which  was  the 
common  property  of  his  day  and  generation. 

Augustine  was  born  and  bred  in  the  midst 
of  an  environment  distinctly  Roman  in  its 
character,  and  he  knew  Christianity  before  his 
conversion  chiefly,  if  not  solely,  in  that  pecu- 
liarly Latin  form  which  it  had  acquired  already 
more  than  a  century  before,  and  which  is  no- 
where more  clearly  portrayed  than  in  the 
writings  of  his  own  countrymen,  the  lawyer 
Tertullian  and  the  ecclesiastic  Cyprian.  In  that 
Christianity  the  most  characteristic  feature  was 
the  dominance  of  legalism.  The  Gospel  was 
regarded  as  a  law  or  a  collection  of  laws,  by 


St.  Augustine  as  a  Prophet  69 

the  observance  of  which  a  man  could  gain 
eternal  life,  but  the  disregard  of  which  entailed 
eternal  condemnation.  God  was  conceived 
commonly  under  the  aspect  of  Lawgiver  and 
Judge,  whose  chief  function  was  to  reward  men 
for  obeying  and  to  punish  them  for  disobeying 
his  commands.  Faith  still  had  a  place  as  the 
initial  act  of  the  Christian  life,  and  God's  grace 
was  still  exercised  through  the  "sacrament  of 
regeneration  "  for  the  remission  of  sins  com- 
mitted before  baptism  ;  but  for  the  Christian 
who  sinned  after  receiving  the  cleansing  rite 
there  was  nothing  to  depend  upon  but  his  own 
endeavours,  divided  between  the  attempt  to 
obey  and  the  effort  to  atone  by  works  of  pen- 
ance for  his  daily  acts  of  disobedience.  The 
Christian  life  had  thus  become  largely  a  mere 
matter  of  calculation.  Not  the  overflow  of  the 
heart  in  love  and  gratitude  to  God ;  not  the 
instinctive  striving  of  the  soul  after  higher  and 
better  things  for  their  own  sake  ;  but  the  pay- 
ment of  enough,  and  no  more  than  enough,  to 
insure  escape  from  death  and  the  enjoyment  of 
the  promised  reward. 

Naturally  associated  with  such  a  conception  of 
the  Christian  life  was  the  tendency  to  push  God 
ever  further  and  further  away —  to  lose  all  sense 


70  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

of  communion  with  him  —  to  regard  him  as  a 
tyrant  to  be  feared  and  appeased  rather  than  as 
a  Father  to  be  loved.  It  would  carry  us  too  far 
afield  to  trace  the  rise  and  development  of  this 
conception  of  God  in  Christian  thought,  but  the 
resemblance  between  it  and  the  God  idea  in 
Latin  paganism  is  striking,  and  the  predilec- 
tion for  it  of  the  native  Roman  mind  is  unmis- 
takable. 

The  same  legalistic  tendency  which  operated 
thus  to  degrade  the  Christian  life  and  the 
Christian's  God  resulted  also  in  the  transfor- 
mation of  the  primitive  Christian  brotherhood 
into  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  of  the  third  and 
following  centuries.  That  which  had  been 
originally  a  mere  communion  of  saints,  bound 
together  by  a  common  faith  and  a  common 
hope,  had  become  already  at  an  early  day  a 
great  and  thoroughly  organized  institution  with 
its  apostolic  episcopate  and  its  clerical  sacerdo- 
talism —  an  institution  claiming  to  be  the  sole 
representative  of  divine  authority,  rebellion 
against  which  meant  rebellion  against  God 
himself,  and  claiming  to  be  the  sole  channel  of 
divine  grace,  outside  whose  pale  salvation  was 
impossible.  It  was  to  such  a  Christianity,  em- 
bodied in  such  a  Church,  that  Augustine  was 


St.  Augustine  as  a  Prophet  72 

converted,  under  the  preaching  of  the  great 
Bishop  Ambrose  of  Milan,  and  it  is  in  the  light 
of  this  environment  that  his  Christian  life  and 
teaching  must  be  studied.  That  he  was  af- 
fected by  it  and  that  much  of  his  thinking 
bears  its  impress,  that  he  showed  himself,  in- 
deed, in  his  controversies  with  heretics  and 
schismatics,  a  devout  believer  not  only  in  the 
authority  of  the  Church  and  in  its  right  to 
demand  implicit  obedience  both  in  thought  and 
deed,  but  also  in  its  exclusive  privilege  to  dis- 
pense the  saving  grace  of  God,  cannot  be 
denied  ;  and  that  he  helped  thereby  to  fasten 
upon  the  neck  of  Western  Christendom  the 
yoke  of  ecclesiasticism  and  sacramentarianism 
is  doubtless  true,  but  it  is  not  this  side  of  his 
teaching  that  is  truly  characteristic  of  him.  It 
is  not  in  what  he  received  from  his  age,  but  in 
what  he  gave  it,  that  his  real  significance  lies. 
He  had  been  no  prophet  had  he  simply  voiced 
the  thinking  of  his  day.  It  was  because  he 
had  another  message  to  utter  —  a  message 
received  direct  from  God  —  that  his  name  still 
lives  beside  the  names  of  Paul  and  Luther. 

"  Thou  mo  vest  us  to  delight  in  praising 
Thee ;  for  Thou  hast  formed  us  for  Thyself, 
and  our  heart  is  restless  till  it  rests  in  Thee." 


72  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

"I  could  not  exist  at  all,  O  my  God,  unless 
Thou  wert  in  me.  Or  should  I  not  rather  say 
that  I  could  not  exist  unless  I  were  in  Thee, 
from  whom  are  all  things,  by  whom  are  all 
things,  in  whom  are  all  things  ?  "  "  O  Thou 
strength  of  my  soul,  enter  into  it  and  prepare 
it  for  Thyself,  that  Thou  mayst  have  and  hold 
it  without  spot  or  wrinkle."  "I  call  Thee  into 
my  soul,  which,  by  the  desire  that  Thou  inspir- 
est  in  it.  Thou  preparest  for  Thy  reception." 
"Thou,  Lord,  hast  blotted  out  all  my  evil 
deserts  that  Thou  mightst  not  repay  into  my 
hands  wherewith  I  have  fallen  from  Thee, 
and  Thou  hast  anticipated  all  my  good  de- 
serts that  Thou  mightst  repay  into  Thy  hands 
wherewith  Thou  madest  me."  "I  can  do  all 
things  through  Him  which  strengtheneth  me. 
Strengthen  Thou  me  that  I  may  be  able.  Give 
what  Thou  commandest,  and  command  what 
Thou  wilt."  "  Another  have  I  heard  entreat- 
ing that  he  might  receive  ...  by  which  it 
appeareth,  O  my  holy  God,  that  Thou  givest 
when  that  Thou  commandest  to  be  done  is 
done." 

It  is  in  such  utterances  as  these,  selected 
almost  at  random  from  his  "  Confessions,"  that 
the  true  Augustine  speaks.     His  response  to 


St.  Augustine  as  a  Prophet  73 

his  contemporaries'  low  and  unchristian  con- 
ception of  God  is  the  abiding  love  of  God, 
which  leads  Him  to  give  all  to  man,  who  de- 
serves nothing  ;  the  constant  nearness  of  God, 
which  makes  intimate  communion  with  Him 
always  a  possibility  ;  the  fatherhood  of  God, 
which  makes  an  unbroken  fellowship  with  Him 
the  supreme  delight  of  the  soul.  His  response 
to  his  contemporaries'  commercial  notions  of 
the  Christian  life  is  the  allness  of  God  and  the 
nothingness  of  man  ;  the  assertion  that  all  that 
is  good  comes  from  God,  and  God  alone ;  that 
man  is  good  only  in  so  far  as  he  depends  upon 
God  and  cleaves  to  Him  ;  that  no  man  can  put 
God  in  his  debt  or  establish  a  claim  of  merit 
over  against  Him,  for  there  is  no  merit  except 
God's  merit,  and  to  be  independent  of  God  is 
to  be  only  evil.  For  an  explanation  of  Augus- 
tine's thought  of  God  and  of  man's  relation  to 
Him  we  may  look  in  the  Psalms  and  in  the 
Epistles  of  Paul,  which  were  his  very  meat  and 
drink,  and  which  he  understood  and  appreciated 
as  no  one  else  in  the  ancient  Church ;  or  we 
may  look  in  Neo-Platonism,  which  profoundly 
influenced  him  at  a  critical  period  in  his  career, 
and  which  constituted  for  him  a  bridge  from 
scepticism  to  the  Catholic  faith.     With  its  con- 


74  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

ceptioii  of  Deity  as  the  only  true  existence,  and 
of  absorption  in  the  divine  as  the  only  true 
good,  it  doubtless  did  much  to  mould  his 
thought.  But  though  we  may  acknowledge 
Augustine's  indebtedness  to  these  and  other 
influences,  we  must  recognize  the  fact  that  his 
theology,  like  his  piety,  finds  his  ultimate 
ground  only  in  his  profound  religious  nature 
and  in  his  vivid  experience.  His  was  a  nature 
to  which  the  divine  was  as  necessary  as  the  air 
he  breathed,  a  nature  open  on  its  upward  side 
towards  the  infinities,  and  finding  no  satisfac- 
tion in  aught  that  failed  to  breathe  their  inspir- 
ation. Even  had  he  never  known  Christianity 
he  must  have  sought  and  remained  unsatisfied 
until  he  found  Deity,  for  he  was  impelled  God- 
ward  by  the  deepest  craving  of  his  soul. 
''  Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself,  and  our  heart 
is  restless  till  it  rests  in  Thee,"  is  the  cry,  not 
alone  of  Augustine  the  Christian,  but  of  Au- 
gustine the  man,  and  Christianity  was  what  it 
was  to  him,  not,  as  to  so  many  others,  because 
it  promised  him  escape  from  punishment  or  the 
enjoyment  of  reward,  but  because  it  opened 
to  him  a  vision  of  the  God  he  had  been  seek- 
ing, because  speaking  in  and  through  it  he 
heard  and  recognized  God's  voice.     He  was  the 


St.  Augustine  as  a  Prophet  75 

prophet,  not  of  a  distant  God,  but  of  a  God 
within  man  ;  not  of  a  God  who  has  withdrawn 
and  hidden  himself  from  his  creatures,  but  of  a 
God  who  still  reveals  himself  to  those  who  will 
but  open  their  eyes  and  look  upon  him.  He 
was  the  prophet  of  such  a  God,  and  he  prophe- 
sied whereof  he  knew.  He  spoke  to  his  fellows 
out  of  the  fulness  of  a  God-knowledge  gained 
by  direct  and  intimate  communion  with  Him. 
He  bore  witness  to  what  he  had  himself  seen  in 
his  immediate  visions  of  the  Father's  face. 
The  secret  of  his  marvellous  influence  over  his 
own  and  subsequent  generations  lies  largely  in 
this  very  fact,  that  he  prophesied,  not  of  what 
he  had  heard  or  thought,  but  of  what  he  had 
experienced  —  that  he  uttered  not  merely  his 
ideas,  but  himself.  Divine  truth  was  incor- 
porated into  his  life  before  it  found  its  way 
to  his  lips ;  he  lived  his  theology  before  he 
taught  it. 

The  dogma  of  original  sin,  for  instance, 
which  Augustine  asserted  so  strenuously  in 
his  controversy  with  the  Pelagians,  and  wdiich 
has  brought  such  widespread  disrepute  upon 
him,  was  no  scholastic  or  artificial  thing  ;  it 
was  in  the  truest  sense  the  fruit  of  his  own 
experience  ;    nor  was  it  out  of   line  with  his 


76  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

highest  thought  of  God  and  man.  The  more 
vividly  conscious  he  was  of  the  presence  of 
the  divine,  the  more  certain  did  he  become  of 
the  essential  kinship  between  God  and  man  — 
a  kinship  which  made  necessary  some  thorough- 
going explanation  of  humanity's  all-too-patent 
lack  of  present  oneness  with  Deity,  in  disposi- 
tion and  in  sympathy.  His  insistence  upon 
the  dogma  bears  witness  to  the  strength  of 
his  conviction  that  man  Avas  made  for  God 
and  finds  his  true  life  only  in  Him,  and  to 
the  keenness  of  his  experience  of  the  empty 
and  unsatisfying  character  of  man's  ordinary 
life,  compared  with  the  possibilities  of  a  life 
of  unbroken  converse  with  the  divine.  And 
so  the  doctrine  of  unconditional  predestination, 
upon  which  he  also  laid  such  earnest  stress, 
rooted  itself,  not  in  any  artificial  conception 
of  God  and  of  man's  relation  to  him,  but  in 
the  experimental  knowledge  that  God  alone  is 
good  and  the  source  of  good,  and  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  independent,  self-originated 
human  merit.  However  harshly  this  truth 
may  have  found  expression  in  the  controver- 
sies in  which  Augustine  was  engaged  —  how- 
ever narrowly  and  artificially  it  may  have  been 
interpreted  at  times  by  Augustine   himself  — 


St.  Augustine  as  a  Prophet  77 

however  unwarrantably  it  may  have  been  made 
to  justify  extreme  and  erroneous  conceptions  of 
man  and  of  God's  dealings  with  him,  the  utter- 
ance of  such  a  truth  must  have  stamped  Augus- 
tine as  a  true  prophet  of  God  in  whatever  age 
and  under  whatever  circumstances  he  had 
spoken.  The  utterance  of  it  in  an  age  per- 
meated with  the  belief  that  man  and  God 
have  nothing  in  common,  and  that  God  blesses 
only  the  man  whose  independent,  self-origi- 
nated merit  makes  him  rightfully  God's  cred- 
itor, stamps  him  as  one  of  the  very  greatest  of 
all  God's  prophets.  His  was  indeed  the  voice 
of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness  —  proclaiming 
to  his  fellows  the  message  which  Christ  him- 
self had  uttered  when  he  revealed  God  in 
human  form,  and  thus  disclosed  the  true 
source  of  all  that  is  truly  good  in  man. 

Augustine  has  often  been  accused  of  giving 
currency,  especially  through  liis  "  Confessions," 
to  an  unhealthful  mysticism  which  inevitably 
leads  to  quietism  and  saps  the  energy  of  the 
Christian  life.  There  was  undoubtedly  an 
element  of  mysticism  in  Augustine's  piety  — 
as  in  that  of  all  the  world's  great  religious 
geniuses  —  but  his  mysticism  was  not  that 
of    the    East,    and    the    pantheistic   mysticism 


78  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

which  was  so  widespread  in  the  West  during 
the  later  Middle  Ages  had  its  progenitor  not 
in  Augustine  but  in  the  Neo-Platonism  of 
Pseudo-Dionysius.  Genuine  Latin  that  he 
was,  Augustine  dealt  in  terms  of  personality 
rather  than  in  terms  of  nature,  and  it  was 
not  of  a  physical  union  between  Deity  and 
humanity  that  he  thought,  but  of  a  personal 
union  between  God  and  man.  It  is  a  fact  of 
great  significance  that  it  was  not  through  his 
study  of  the  universe,  but  through  his  study 
of  himself,  that  his  eyes  were  at  length  opened 
to  the  God  he  had  so  long  been  seeking.  "  God 
and  the  soul  —  that  is  what  I  desire  to  know," 
he  says  in  his  Soliloquies.  "  Nothing  more  ? 
nothing  whatever." 

He  was  a  psychologist  before  he  was  a  theo- 
logian, and  his  apprehension  of  his  own  indi- 
viduality was  far  too  vivid  to  permit  him  to 
content  himself  in  genuine  mystic  fashion  with 
the  idea  of  a  mere  absorption  in  Deity  as  the 
end  of  existence,  while  his  acquaintance  with 
the  inmost  workings  of  his  own  soul  was 
too  thoroughgoing  for  him  to  conceive  of  any 
union  between  God  and  man  which  was  not 
conditioned  primarily  upon  a  conscious  unity 
of   will   and  purpose.     And   so  he  found,  not 


St.  Aui/ustine  as  a  Prophet  79 

in  mere  contact  of  nature  with  nature,  whether 
through  mystic  contemplation  or  through  par- 
ticipation in  the  sacrament  of  the  body  and 
blood  of  incarnate  Deity,  but  in  the  love  of 
the  human  heart  for  God,  the  true  secret  of 
oneness  with  Him.  This  was  the  Christianity 
which  he  preached :  the  heart  of  man  respond- 
ing to  the  heart  of  God  —  love  answering  love 
—  self  lost,  not  in  the  contemplation  of  Deity, 
but  in  devotion  to  Him.  Truly,  motive  power 
enough  in  such  teaching  to  transform  the  life 
of  Christendom! 

Augustine  did  not  live  in  vain.  It  is  true 
that  many  of  the  traditional  misconceptions 
which  his  higher  views  should  have  led  him 
to  repudiate  find  expression  in  his  writings, 
and  that  much  that  is  artificial  and  unhealth- 
ful  in  Christianity  has  in  his  teaching  a  war- 
rant for  its  existence  ;  but,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  he  was  a  child  of  his  age  and  was  unable 
to  free  himself  completely  from  its  bondage,  he 
gave  to  those  who  came  after  him  a  conviction 
of  the  abiding  grace  of  God  and  of  man's  con- 
stant dependence  upon  him  which  had  in  it  the 
seeds  of  better  things  to  come.  This  very  con- 
viction might,  as  it  did  in  subsequent  genera- 
tions,  bind   the   yoke   of   ecclesiasticism   even 


80  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

more  tightly  upon  the  neck  of  Christendom  by 
magnifying  the  need  of  that  grace  which  the 
Church  alone  could  dispense  ;  but,  in  spite  of 
the  evil  consequences  which  flowed  from  such  a 
tendency,  Augustine's  conception  of  God  was 
and  remained  a  blessing.  God  a  Father  in- 
stead of  a  mere  Avenger,  even  if  the  Father 
only  of  those  within  the  Catholic  Church  ; 
God  near  instead  of  far,  even  if  near  only  in 
the  sacraments  :  this  was  no  small  gain ;  and 
there  came  a  time  when  the  great  truth  uttered 
by  Augustine  found  a  clearer-eyed  and  surer- 
voiced  champion  in  Augustine's  greater  disciple, 
Luther.  Their  Gospel  was  one,  but  eleven  cen- 
turies of  ecclesiasticism  and  sacramentarianism 
had  taught  the  later  prophet  what  the  earlier 
had  not  learned.  The  evangelicism  of  the 
great  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century 
was  Augustine's,  its  Protestantism  was  Lu- 
ther's own. 


VI 


JOHN  WYCLIFFE 


•\ 


VI 

JOHN   WYCLIFFE 

BY   THE    VERY    REV.    W.    H.    FREMANTLE,    D.D. 

Wycliffe  was  a  prophet.  We  must  not 
limit  the  spirit  of  prophecy  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. Not  only  do  we  read  of  prophets  in 
New  Testament  times  at  Antioch  (Acts  xiii. 
1)  and  Corinth  (1  Cor.  xii.  28),  but  also  in 
the  ancient  writing  called  the  "  Didache "  and 
in  the  hymn  "Te  Deum."  Why  should  we 
confine  prophecy  to  those  first  Christian  ages  ? 
On  the  tomb  of  Luther  the  inscription  rightly 
stands,  "  Propheta  Germanise." 

The  special  character  of  the  prophet  is  that 
of  one  who  speaks  for  God  ;  and  of  one  who 
does  this,  not  as  a  scribe  who  reads  from  a 
book,  nor  as  an  ordinary  pastor  who  makes  use 
of  all  the  means  at  hand  to  influence  men,  but 
as  one  in  direct  communion  with  the  Unseen. 
And,  further,  the  prophet's  message  is  always 
one  of  Righteousness.  He  disentangles  God's 
righteousness  from  the  wrappings  of  system, 
83 


84  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

and  makes  it  stand   out   bright   and   burning 
before  the  eyes  of  men. 

But  there  are  differences  in  the  form  which 
the  message  takes,  and  the  medium  through 
which  it  operates.  Carlyle  presents  to  us  the 
Hero  in  different  guises  —  as  Priest,  as  States- 
man, as  Man  of  Letters.  We  may  do  the  same 
with  the  Prophets.  In  Wycliffe  we  may  see 
the  Prophet  as  Schoolman.  The  Schoolmen, 
too,  had  their  different  titles.  Aquinas  was 
the  Angelic,  Bonaventura  the  Seraphic,  Ock- 
ham  the  Invincible  or  the  Singular.  Wycliffe 
was  the  Evangelical  Doctor.  The  Evangelical 
Righteousness  which  filled  his  soul  is  the  key 
to  all  his  thought  and  teaching.  It  led  him, 
first,  to  maintain  the  Scriptures  as  supreme 
above  traditions,  Fathers,  councils.  Papal  de- 
crees ;  secondly,  to  uphold  the  rights  of  the 
nation,  as  the  organ  of  public  righteousness, 
against  the  Pope  and  the  clergy ;  thirdly, 
to  insist  on  the  paramount  importance  of  the 
pastoral  office  over  the  work  of  the  monastic 
orders  ;  and,  lastly,  to  rehandle  the  doctrine 
of  the  Church  in  the  light  of  Scripture  and  of 
sound  reason.  All  this  makes  him  to  be  justly 
esteemed  as  the  pioneer,  or  Morning  Star,  of 
the  Reformation. 


John  Wycliffe  85 

Wycliffe  was  born  about  1320,  at  Spresswell, 
near  Old  Richmond  on  the  Tees,  in  the  north 
of  Yorkshire,  close  to  the  village  of  Wycliffe, 
from  which  his  family  took  its  name.  But, 
like  other  prophets,  he  was  without  honour  in 
his  o^vn  house  ;  his  family  were,  and  remained, 
strong  Papists.  Of  his  early  training  we  know 
nothing  ;  he  probably  went  to  Oxford  about 
the  age  of  fifteen,  and  became  a  scholar  and 
afterwards  a  Fellow  of  Balliol  College.  This 
College,  which  had  been  founded  by  John  of 
Balliol  in  1262  and  consolidated  by  his  widow 
Dervorquilla  in  1282,  was  connected  with 
Wycliffe's  country  through  the  endowments 
which  they  had  given  it  (and  which  it  still 
possesses)  at  Bernard  Castle  on  the  Tees,  and 
was  the  rallying-place  for  the  "  Boreales "  or 
Northern  men,  as  Merton  College  was  for  the 
Southerners. 

The  colleges  at  Oxford  were  at  first  little 
more  than  lodging-houses  where  poor  scholars 
were  provided  for  while  they  were  reading  for 
the  higher  degrees.  When  Wycliffe  joined 
the  University,  there  were,  in  the  College 
which  has  attained  in  our  day  a  leading 
academical  and  social  position,  twenty-two 
Fellows,   with   a   weekly   allowance    of    eight 


86  Prophets  of  the  Ohristiafi  Faith 

farthings  apiece  for  maintenance  ;  they  were 
bound  to  resign  when  they  took  the  degree  of 
Master  of  Arts,  and  their  Master  was  elected 
from  among  themselves.  Their  position  was 
improved  in  1341  by  the  benefactions  of  Sir 
William  Felton  and  Sir  Philip  Somerville, 
through  which  their  allowance  was  increased 
to  twelve  farthings  a  week  (equal  to  about 
five  shillings  now),  with  clothing  ;  six  Theo- 
logical Fellowships  were  instituted  ;  and  the 
Fellows  were  allowed  to  remain  till  they 
should  attain  a  sufficient  living  from  the 
Church.  Since  the  rule  still  remained  that 
the  Master  must  be  elected  from  among  the 
Fellows,  it  is  all  but  certain  that  Wy cliff e 
held  one  of  these  Fellowships  till  he  was  made 
Master,  about  the  year  1358. 

In  1361  Wycliffe  was  appointed  Rector  of 
Fillingham,  in  Norfolk  ;  in  1369  he  changed 
this  benefice  for  that  of  Ludgershall,  in  Bucks, 
some  ten  miles  from  Oxford  ;  and  in  1374  he 
was  appointed  by  the  Crown  to  be  Rector  of 
Lutterworth,  which  position  he  held  till  his 
death  in  1384.  At  the  first  of  these  parishes 
he  seems  to  have  seldom  resided  ;  the  leave  of 
absence  which  he  craved  in  1368  from  the 
Bishop  of   Norwich  in  a  still  extant   petition, 


John  Wycliffe  87 

in  order  that  he  might  devote  himself  to  study 
at  Oxford,  probably  denotes  his  usual  practice, 
a  practice  common  in  that  and  many  other 
times ;  at  Ludgershall,  as  being  nearer  to 
Oxford,  he  was  probably  more  constantly 
resident,  and  at  Lutterworth  he  fully  dis- 
charged the  pastoral  duties.  His  increased 
sense  of  responsibility  and  of  the  importance 
of  the  pastoral  office  no  doubt  made  him 
unwilling  to  hold  the  cure  of  souls  as  a  mere 
benefice.  Yet  he  was  often  in  Oxford,  even 
till  his  last  years ;  he  appears  to  have  had 
some  connection  with  Queen's  College,  where 
his  name  occurs  as  occupying  a  room. 

His  studies  began  with  what  was  called  the 
Trivium  —  Grammar,  Dialectics,  and  Rhetoric  ; 
and  the  Quadrivium  —  Arithmetic,  Geometry, 
Astronomy,  and  Music.  But  there  is  evi- 
dence that  he  studied  with  enthusiasm  Natural 
Science  and  Natural  History  ;  and  he  became 
thoroughly  versed  in  legal  studies,  not  only  in 
the  Canon  and  Civil  Law,  to  which  he  would 
necessarily  be  led  by  theology  and  Church 
history,  but  also  the  laws  of  England.  Oxford 
was  at  that  time  the  most  celebrated  university 
in  Europe.  It  had  produced  within  one  hun- 
dred   years   Roger   Bacon,  the   physicist    (the 


88  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Doctor  Mirabilis,  d.  1292)  ;  Grostete,  the  just 
and  patriotic  Bishop  of  Lincoln  (d.  1253)  ; 
Duns  Scotus,  the  Realist  (d.  1308)  ;  William 
of  Ockham,  the  Nominalist  (d.  1347)  ;  Rich- 
ard Fitzralph,  the  opponent  of  the  Mendicant 
Orders  (Archbishop  of  Armagh,  1347)  ;  and 
Thomas  Bradwardine,  the  Doctor  Profundus, 
the  Predestinarian  (d.  as  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, 1349).  Of  each  of  these  we  may- 
trace  the  influence  in  Wycliffe's  writings. 
Yet  he  stands  forth  as  entirely  original.  In 
answer  to  one  who  accuses  him  of  taking  his 
opinions  from  Ockham,  he  says  :  "  My  convic- 
tions owe  their  origin  neither  to  him  nor  to  me, 
but  are  irrefragably  established  by  Holy  Script- 
ure." He  was  recognized  by  all  his  contem- 
poraries at  Oxford  as  the  first  man  among  them 
in  knowledge  and  in  dialectical  skill.  His 
diligence,  his  resource  in  argument,  his  biting 
wit,  his  wealth  of  illustration,  all  contributed 
to  this  ;  but,  far  more  than  all,  his  force  of 
character  and  deep  conviction,  his  genuine  and 
humble  piety,  and  his  entire  reliance  on  the 
Scriptures.  He  is  never  the  mere  apologist  or 
argumentative  fencer,  but  a  preacher  of  right- 
eousness. In  his  last  complaint  to  the  Parlia- 
ment (1382)  he  does  not  take  up  a  position  of 


John  Wycliffe  89 

self-defence,  but  boldly  demands  that,  in  spite 
of  Pope  and  bishops,  free  course  should  be 
allowed  to  the  preaching  of  the  true  doctrine 
of  the  Sacraments. 

The  time  was  one  of  great  unsettlement, 
such  as  needs  a  strong  man.  The  English 
nation  was  all  on  fire  with  the  long  war  with 
France,  at  one  moment  drunk  with  prosperity, 
at  another  dejected  by  the  loss  of  all  its  great- 
ness ;  the  Black  Death  (1348)  stalked  across 
Europe  and  mowed  down  half  the  inhabitants 
of  England,  producing  the  usual  results  of 
pestilence  —  panic,  recklessness,  a  dislocation 
of  human  relations,  and  begetting  wild  hopes 
by  the  sudden  rise  of  wages  and  of  prices 
through  the  paucity  of  labourers.  The  system 
of  the  Middle  Ages  was  coming  to  an  end ; 
the  Popes  had  left  Rome  for  Avignon  (1305), 
and  their  return  to  Rome  in  1376  produced  the 
great  schism  which  shook  men's  allegiance. 
Intellectually,  also,  the  world  was  changing. 
Scholasticism  was  waning,  the  Renaissance 
was  dawning  with  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio. 
And  there  was  an  uprising  of  the  common 
people,  not  merely  to  get  rid  of  serfdom,  as 
under  Wat  Tyler  and  John  Ball  in  1381,  but 
to  gain  knowledge,  as  is  witnessed  by  the  poem 


90  Prophets  of  tlie  Christian  Faith 

of  "Piers  Plowman,"  in  which  Truth  reveals 
herself,  not  to  the  lord  or  the  ecclesiastic,  but 
to  the  peasant.  Till  this  time  Latin  had  been 
the  language  of  the  scholar,  the  divine,  and  the 
lawyer,  as  French  had  been  that  of  the  court ; 
but  now  Wycliffe  in  his  Bible  and  his  later 
works,  Langland  in  his  popular  poem,  and  the 
courtly  Chaucer  in  his  Tales,  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  English  literature.  This  in  Wycliffe's 
case  was  not  so  much  a  literary  change  as  an 
appeal  to  the  popular  heart,  grounded  on  the 
noble  belief  that  simple  men  are  capable  of 
developing  the  highest  powers  :  "  One  simple 
man,"  he  says,  "if  the  grace  of  Christ  be  in 
him,  is  more  profitable  to  the  Church  than 
many  graduates,  since  he  sows  Christ's  law 
humbly  and  abundantly  by  work  as  well  as 
by  word." 

The  change  just  noticed,  the  appeal  of  the 
scholastic  divine  to  the  people,  is  a  genuine 
product  of  Christian  thought.  The  Schoolmen 
had  many  authorities  to  which  they  appealed 
with  equal  confidence  —  the  Scriptures,  the 
Fathers,  Aristotle,  the  decrees  of  Popes  and 
Councils.  Gradually  but  surely  Wycliffe  raises 
the  Scriptures  above  the  rest,  and  places  them 
on  a  pedestal  where  their  unique  value  is  per- 


John  WycUffe  91 

ceived.  And,  as  time  goes  on,  and  he  is  met 
by  obduracy  on  the  part  of  those  in  high  place, 
he  is  convinced  that  it  is  not  learning  but 
spiritual  enlightenment  which  enables  men  to 
apprehend  truth,  and  he  turns  to  the  people ; 
the  Scriptures  must  be  given  to  them  in  their 
own  tongue,  and  must  be  set  forth  by  plain  men 
in  plain  words.  *'  If  you  mix  too  many  flowers 
with  the  seed,"  he  says,  "  it  will  not  take  root.'' 
This  led  first  to  the  formation  of  his  own  philo- 
sophical views  on  a  directly  Scriptural  basis, 
and  valuing  the  simple  teaching  of  Christ  and 
the  Apostles  above  all  the  subtleties  of  the 
schools  ;  then  to  the  translation  of  the  Bible 
into  English,  then  to  the  writing  of  English 
sermons  and  tracts,  and  to  the  training  of  a 
body  of  Poor  Priests,  who,  like  the  Franciscans 
in  a  former  and  the  Wesleyans  in  a  later  cen- 
tury, went  to  and  fro  among  the  people,  bring- 
ing the  simple  elements  of  divine  truth  into 
their  hearts  and  their  homes. 

The  righteousness  of  which  Wycliffe  was  the 
prophet  had  to  be  carried  into  public  life ;  he 
became  a  legist  and  a  statesman.  It  is  prob- 
able that  he  sat  in  Parliament,  not  only  in  the 
''Good  Parliament"  of  1376,  when  the  Black 
Prince  rose  from  his  death-bed  to  aid  the  cause 


92  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

of  moral  reform  in  court  and  council,  but  also 
in  1366,  when  the  question  of  tribute  paid  to 
the  Pope  was  discussed  with  great  vehemence. 
It  is  known  that  six  Masters  of  Arts  were  sum- 
moned by  the  King  to  that  Parliament,  and 
that  Wycliffe  speaks  of  himself  as  "  the  King's 
own  clerk "  ;  that  he  gives  a  long  account  of 
the  speeches  of  seven  Lords  in  the  debate  ;  and 
that  he  reports  certain  words  of  the  Bishop  of 
Rochester  as  addressed  to  him  "  in  the  public 
sitting  of  Parliament."  The  tribute  of  1000 
marks  a  year  had  been  imposed  on  King  John 
by  Innocent  III.  as  the  price  of  the  restoration 
of  the  kingdom  and  the  acknowledgment  that 
the  Pope  was  overlord  of  England.  It  had 
never  been  paid  willingly,  and  for  thirty-three 
years  had  not  been  paid  at  all;  the  Pope  de- 
manded payment  with  arrears.  And  this  claim 
was  connected  with  the  numerous  exactions  of 
the  Papacy,  such  as  that  of  the  first  year's  in- 
come of  all  benefices.  Arnald,  the  Pope's 
treasurer,  had  an  office  in  London,  at  which 
these  dues  or  exactions  were  paid.  In  the  pro- 
cess of  the  dispute,  which  lasted  many  years, 
it  was  shown  that  the  Pope  (and  a  French 
Pope  living  at  Avignon)  habitually  appointed 
to  English  church  offices  favourites  of  his  own 


John  Wycliffe  93 

who  never  set  foot  in  the  realm,  and  that  the 
revenues  going  out  of  England  to  the  Pope 
were  four  times  as  large  as  those  paid  to  the 
King.  AVycliffe  wrote  a  tract  on  the  oath  of 
Arnald,  taken  on  his  appointment,  in  which  he 
swore  that  he  would  do  nothing  contrary  to 
the  interests  of  the  realm,  that  he  would  give 
good  advice  to  the  King,  and  that  he  would 
conform  to  the  laws  of  England.  In  every 
particular,  as  Wycliffe  shows,  this  oath  had 
been  violated;  the  pecuniary  interests  of  the 
Pope  had  been  made  to  override  all  law  and 
justice.  The  clergy  stood  by  the  Pope ;  but 
the  laity  were  grateful  to  a  theologian  who 
could  vindicate  the  cause  of  England  against 
the  rapacity  of  foreigners  which  was  cloaked 
with  holy  sanctions.  The  court  and  the  people 
stood  by  him,  with  hardly  an  exception,  to  the 
end. 

It  was  not  as  a  partisan  that  Wycliffe  took 
this  course,  but  from  a  profound  sense  of  jus- 
tice. Righteousness  was  more  to  him  than 
clerical  interests.  And  this  led  him  further. 
He  was  sent  on  an  embassy  to  Bruges  in  1374 
to  treat  with  the  envoys  of  the  Pope  on  the 
questions  just  mentioned  ;  and  at  the  same 
time  an  embassy  under  John  of  Gaunt,    Duke 


94  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

of  Lancaster,  was  sent  to  Bruges  to  make  peace 
with  France.  Both  embassies  proved  futile  ; 
but  the  occasion  had  three  important  conse- 
quences for  Wycliffe.  First,  it  made  him  more 
fully  acquainted  with  the  duplicity  of  the  Pope 
and  of  the  English  clergy  who  were  under 
his  influence ;  secondly,  it  commended  him  to 
Lancaster,  who  ever  afterwards  stood  by  him  ; 
and,  thirdly,  it  placed  him  on  an  eminence 
as  a  patriot  when  the  refusal  of  the  Pope 
to  do  justice  was  debated  next  year  in  Par- 
liament. 

But  Wycliffe  was  led  much  further.  He 
saw  that  the  clergy  must  be  brought  under  the 
national  law.  He  maintained  that  the  nation 
had  the  right,  not  merely  of  taxing  them  (for 
hitherto  they  had  been  exempt),  but  of  depriv- 
ing them  of  their  estates  if  this  were  expedient 
for  the  good  of  the  country  and  of  religion. 
And  he  came  more  and  more  to  the  conviction 
that  the  possession  of  land,  with  the  feudal  posi- 
tion which  it  implied,  was  prejudicial  to  both 
Church  and  realm.  He  even  wrote  to  the  Pope 
exhorting  him  to  disembarrass  himself  of  his 
temporal  sovereignty  as  an  example  to  the 
clergy  throughout  Christendom.  The  require- 
ments and  laws  of  the  country,  not  the  hierar- 


John  WycUffe  95 

chical  position  of  the  clergy,  must  regulate 
public  policy  if  righteousness  was  to  prevail. 
To  these  victories  he  gave  systematic  expres- 
sion in  his  great  work  "  De  Dominio."  God  is 
the  righteous  ruler  to  whom  all  sovereignty 
belongs,  but  he  has  given  parts  of  it,  as  a  stew- 
ardship, to  those  who  rule  under  Him,  to  the 
Pope  and  clergy,  to  the  king  and  magistrates, 
and  to  each  believer  according  to  his  position. 
Each  of  these,  as  holding  under  Him  (for  the 
feudal  idea  is  still  dominant),  so  far  as  he  is 
faithful  to  the  great  Overlord,  is  supreme  in 
his  own  sphere.  Thus,  in  contradistinction 
to  the  Papal  theory  (constantly  set  forth  by 
the  image  of  the  plurality  of  the  keys  or  the 
two  swords  in  Peter's  hands)  that  the  Pope  is 
supreme  over  all  departments  of  life,  Wycliffe 
asserts  the  sacredness  of  the  human  conscience 
and  human  relations  in  themselves,  and  their 
immunity  from  Papal  interference.  His  more 
popular  tract ''  On  the  Six  Yokes  "  —  that  is,  the 
social  relations  which  are  binding  on  us  all  — 
is  an  anticipation  of  William  Tyndale's  "  Obedi- 
ence of  a  Christian  Man."  The  clergy  are  to 
minister  faithfully  and  in  subordination  to  the 
Scriptures,  their  faithfulness  being  judged  of 
by  the  nation  to  which  they  minister ;  that  is 


96  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

their  sphere;  but  in  all  other  spheres  the  ruler, 
be  he  king  or  father  or  master,  or  simple  indi- 
vidual, is  responsible  to  God  alone.  The  natu- 
ral law  of  human  society  is  the  law  of  God's 
righteousness. 

This  sense  of  the  need  of  righteousness  in  all 
departments  of  life  led  Wycliffe,  in  the  next 
place,  to  recognize  the  paramount  value  of  the 
pastoral  office  above  all  parts  of  the  Church 
system.  It  led  him  in  his  old  age  to  leave  the 
University,  its  philosophy  and  its  disputations, 
the  scenes  of  his  intellectual  triumphs,  for  a 
country  parish;  to  esteem  the  effort  to  raise 
the  common  life  by  pastoral  intercourse  of  more 
importance  than  the  solitary  and  unearthly 
piety  aimed  at  in  monasteries  and  colleges,  and 
to  bend  all  his  energies  to  the  translation  of  the 
Bible,  the  issuing  of  plain  English  tracts  and 
sermons,  and  the  training  of  his  Poor  Priests. 

We  may  best  view  the  country  parson  of 
those  days  through  the  description  of  him  given 
by  Chaucer,  who  is  supposed  to  have  had 
Wycliffe  as  the  model  for  his  picture  :  "  He 
was  a  learned  man,  a  clerk,  .  .  .  preaching 
Christ's  Gospel  truely,  wondrous  diligent, 
patient  in  times  of  adversity,  willing  to  give 
rather  than  exact  from  his  flock." 


John  Wi/cliffe  97 

Wide  was  his  parish,  and  houses  far  asunder, 

But  he  ne  left  nought  ne  for  rain  nor  thunder, 

In  sickness  and  in  mischief,  to  visit 

The  farthest  in  his  parish,  much  and  lit, 

Upon  his  feet,  and  in  his  hand  a  staff. 

This  noble  example  to  his  sheep  he  yaf  [gave], 

That  he  first  wrought,  and  afterwards  he  taught. 

This  description  certainly  appears  to  fall  in 
with  the  views  of  the  pastoral  office  which 
Wy cliff e  entertained.  The  parochial  life  dif- 
fers from  the  monastic  in  that  it  brings  the 
pastor  in  contact  with  the  common  experience 
of  men  and  all  its  varied  discipline.  It  differs 
also  from  the  life  of  the  evangelist  or  revival 
preacher  in  that  it  does  not  touch  men  merely 
at  one  point,  but  enters  into  their  homes  and  their 
business  ;  and  it  Avould  seem  that  Wycliff e,  like 
Fitzralph  of  Armagh,  contrasted  the  life  of  the 
parson  or  "secular"  priest  with  that  of  the 
friars  on  this  ground  as  well  as  on  the  ground 
of  their  having  become  corrupt  and  self-seek- 
ing, and  of  their  being  the  special  emissaries 
of  the  Pope.  It  is  certain  that  in  his  later 
life  he  regarded  them  as  a  power  which  did 
not  make  for  righteousness ;  so  much  so  that 
on  one  occasion,  when  he  was  ill,  he  suddenly 
roused  himself,  exclaiming,  "  I  shall   not    die. 


98  Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

but  live  and  declare  the  works  of  the  Friars." 
He  would  have  wished  the  parochial  clergy  to 
be  married,  so  that  they  might  be  more  closely 
in  contact  with  the  life  of  the  people.  And  we 
may  connect  this  zeal  for  parochial  well-being 
with  his  public  spirit  and  desire  for  righteous- 
ness in  the  nation  ;  for  the  parish  is  a  fraction 
of  the  nation. 

The  great  instrument  for  his  parochial  work 
and  teaching  was  the  English  Bible,  at  which 
he  laboured  on,  revising  and  correcting,  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  The  translation  was  made 
from  the  Latin  Vulgate,  for  both  Greek  and 
Hebrew  were  then  inaccessible.  Wy cliff e  was 
assisted  by  his  friends  Nicholas  Hereford  and 
John  Purvey,  the  latter  of  whom  revised  the 
whole  after  the  Master's  death.  To  this  were 
added  many  simple  tracts  and  short  sermons 
in  English  (almost  all  the  English  works  be- 
long to  this  time  of  his  life)  which  served  as 
guides  to  his  itinerant  preachers. 

It  would  appear  that  Wycliffe  had  during 
his  Oxford  days  gathered  round  him  a  few 
scholars  whom  he  trained  as  preachers.  Their 
numbers  were  now  largely  added  to.  They 
were  mostly  very  simple  men,  like  the  first 
Franciscans  or  the  first  Methodists.     Wycliffe 


John  Wycliffe  99 

applies  to  them  the  word  "  Idiotes,''  which  was 
given  to  the  Apostles  by  the  Sanhedrin.  They 
went  about  clad  in  a  long  russet  gown,  preach- 
ing and  singing  in  a  way  which  earned  them 
the  name  of  Lollards  (babblers  or  chaunters), 
appealing  as  men  of  the  people  to  their  own 
order,  and  endeavouring  in  their  rude  way 
to  free  religion,  especially  the  sacrament,  from 
its  superstitious  elements,  and  to  waken  men 
up  to  righteousness  and  "  the  law  of  Christ," 
as  Wycliffe  constantly  called  the  simple  Chris- 
tianity which  he  delighted  to  teach. 

But  little  or  nothing  would  have  been  done 
had  Wycliffe's  reform  not  touched  the  errors  of 
doctrine  which  were  stifling  the  Gospel.  His 
glory  is  that  he  attempted  to  shake  the  whole 
fabric  of  Papal  error.  He  judged  the  whole 
by  its  bearing  on  righteousness.  The  Pope,  so 
Wycliffe  taught,  is  to  be  resisted  when  acting 
unrighteously;  the  support  and  allegiance  of 
the  faithful  is  to  be  withdrawn  from  the 
clergy  when  they  are  untrue  to  their  calling. 
The  Church  is  not  a  body  of  persons  conform- 
ing to  certain  ordinances  of  which  the  clergy 
hold  the  key,  but  the  entire  body  of  the  elect. 
The  moral  and  independent  standing  which 
election  implies  is  all  in   all.     The  sacrament 


100        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

is  the  receiving  of  Christ  by  means  of  the 
sign  or  emblem ;  and  the  change  wrought  in 
the  elements  is  that  they  become  capable  of 
bringing  home  the  person  or  presence  of  Christ 
to  the  believing  heart.  This,  at  least,  seems  to 
be  the  meaning  of  Wycliffe's  expressions,  which 
are  couched  in  scholastic  forms.  Transubstan- 
tiation,  on  the  other  hand,  he  utterly  rejects. 
How  can  the  "  accidents  "  of  taste  or  touch  re- 
main if  the  substance  is  changed?  A  shrew- 
mouse  would  detect  the  fallacy.  In  the  great 
matter  of  justification  Wycliffe  does  not  take 
the  same  ground  as  Luther ;  not  that  he  dif- 
fers from  him,  but  that  the  aspect  of  the  Gospel 
which  he  chiefly  realizes  is  not  that  of  confer- 
ring the  pardon  of  sin,  but  that  of  leading  men 
into  living  participation  in  the  divine  righteous- 
ness. He  views  the  whole  process  of  redemp- 
tion through  the  medium  of  God's  sovereignty, 
and  dwells  on  the  election  of  men  to  right- 
eousness, though  not  overriding  free  will  and 
not  admitting  the  idea  of  reprobation. 

We  may  see  now  the  way  in  which  Wycliffe 
was  a  precursor  of  the  Reformation.  He  was 
a  prophet  nourishing  his  soul  directly  from  the 
source  of  eternal  life,  not  through  the  media 
of   human   inventions,   and    speaking    directly 


John  WycUffe  101 

for  God  and  for  righteousness.  This  is  in- 
deed the  essence  of  the  Reformation  doctrine, 
that  we  are  righteous  through  faith  alone ; 
for  what  is  meant  by  faith  is  not  some  formal 
belief,  or  acceptance  of  some  special  truth,  but 
the  spiritual  enlightenment,  the  expression  of 
the  divine  life  in  the  soul,  that  which  "  makes 
evident  the  things  not  seen,"  and  '*  endures 
as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible."  This  faith 
Wycliffe  possessed  in  the  highest  degree.  It 
was  this  which  made  him  realize  the  suprem- 
acy of  Scripture  above  all  writings,  and  of 
Christ  above  all  human  things,  "  our  only 
Emperor,  Lord,  Bishop,  and  Abbot."  It  was 
this  which  made  him  assert  the  divine  sover- 
eignty, with  which  no  human  will  or  inven- 
tion can  conflict.  It  was  this  which  made 
him  take  an  independent  attitude  towards 
church  ordinances,  and  use  them  only  as  con- 
ducive to  righteousness,  but  which  also  gave 
so  high  a  value  in  his  eyes  to  plain  preaching 
and  the  manifestation  of  truth  to  the  con- 
science. It  was  this,  finally,  which  made  him 
assert  the  independent  validity  of  the  gifts  or 
ministries  assigned  to  each  believer,  and,  as  a 
corollary  from  this,  the  divine  functions  of 
human  government  —  an  assertion   which   was 


102        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

renewed  by  the  reformers  of  the  sixteenth 
century  only  to  be  buried  again  beneath  a 
heap  of  scholastic  disputations ;  an  assertion, 
nevertheless,  which  needs  as  much  now  as  in 
his  day  to  be  renewed  and  made  practical  if 
Christianity  is  ever  to  master  the  world. 

The  meed  accorded  to  Wycliffe  was  that 
which  the  world  has  usually  accorded  to  the 
prophets.  He  was  arraigned  as  a  heretic  by 
Courtenay,  first  as  Bishop  of  London,  in  1377, 
before  the  Convocation  at  St.  Paul's,  when 
he  was  saved  by  the  appearance  at  his  side  of 
John  of  Gaunt,  who  quarrelled  violently  with 
the  Bishop  and  prevented  any  action  being 
taken  ;  and  again  by  the  same  prelate  as  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  at  Lambeth,  in  1382, 
when  he  was  saved  by  the  intervention  of 
the  Queen  Mother,  the  widow  of  the  Black 
Prince,  and  by  the  threatening  attitude  of  the 
citizens  of  London,  who  honoured  him.  His 
University  was  forced  by  the  Pope  and  the 
Archbishop  to  condemn  various  propositions 
from  his  writings,  but  he,  being  present,  man- 
fully defended  himself ;  and  no  one  dared 
either  to  touch  his  person  or  to  subject  him 
to  excommunication.  His  advice  was  sought 
by  the  King  on  his   relations   with   the   Pope 


John  Wycliffe  103 

at  the  very  time  when  the  ecclesiastical  power 
was  trying  to  destroy  him ;  and  he  continued 
his  work  at  Lutterworth  unimpeded,  and, 
though  touched  with  paralysis  in  1383,  dis- 
played an  astonishing  activity  in  pastoral  and 
literary  labours  to  the  end.  At  length,  on  the 
last  day  of  1384,  he  was  struck  down  by  a 
second  paralytic  seizure,  during  the  sacrament, 
and  died  with  his  friends  around  him. 

His  body  was  exhumed  in  1428  in  pursuance 
of  a  decree  of  the  Council  of  Constance,  and 
his  ashes  thrown  into  the  Swift.  But  mean- 
while his  works  had  been  carried  far  and  wide. 
In  Bohemia,  which  they  reached  through  those 
about  Anne  of  Bohemia,  wife  of  Richard  II., 
they  inspired  new  prophets,  Hus  and  Jerome 
of  Prague,  who  were  treacherously  put  to 
death  for  propagating  his  opinions  by  the 
Council  of  Constance,  and  gave  rise  to  a 
national  movement  which,  though  quenched  in 
bloodshed,  leavened  the  life  of  the  whole  peo- 
ple. In  England  it  was  said  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fifteenth  century  that  every  third  man 
was  a  Lollard ;  and  the  first  Parliament  of 
Henry  V.  was  so  swayed  by  Wycliffe's  anti- 
clerical principles  that  the  ecclesiastics  trem- 
bled for  their  estates.     But  the  renewal  of  the 


104         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

French  wars  drew  the  whole  mind  of  the 
country  in  another  direction ;  and  the  move- 
ment of  Wycliffe,  already  compromised  during 
his  lifetime  by  its  supposed  connection  with 
Wat  Tyler's  agrarian  revolt,  was  finally  dis- 
credited when  its  leader,  Sir  John  Oldcastle, 
was  provoked  in  1417  to  take  arms  against 
his  King.  But  though  Lollardry  was  crushed, 
the  influence  of  Wycliffe  was  never  extin- 
guished. As  many  as  a  hundred  and  fifty 
copies  of  Wycliffe's  Bible  still  remain ;  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that  it  was  widely  read  by 
the  common  people,  for  whom  it  was  written, 
throughout  the  fifteenth  century.  When,  in 
1510,  a  raid  against  heretics  was  made  by 
Fitzjames,  Bishop  of  London,  so  violent  that 
Colet  wrote  to  Erasmus  that  all  the  prisons 
were  full  of  them,  the  articles  in  almost  all 
cases  stated  that  the  accused  possessed  copies 
of  Wycliffe's  Bible  or  of  some  of  his  works  ; 
and  Erasmus,  in  his  account  of  his  pilgrimage 
to  the  shrine  of  Becket,  at  Canterbury,  when 
he  tells  how  his  companion  (Colet)  questioned 
the  advantage  of  such  an  exhibition  of  relics, 
represents  his  interlocutor  as  saying  :  "  Who 
was  your  friend?  Some  Wycliffite,  I  sup- 
pose."    Thus  the  reformer  of  the  fourteenth 


Johi  Wycliffe  105 

century  joins  hands    with  the  reformer  of  the 
sixteenth. 

x\nd  thus  it  is  ever  with  the  prophet.  "  In 
the  sight  of  the  unwise  he  seems  to  die,"  but 
"  his  hope  is  full  of  immortality "  ;  his  spirit 
lives  on  and  prepares  men  for  the  better  day. 


VII 

MARTIN  LUTHER,  THE  PROPHET 
OF  THE  REFORMATION 


VII 


MARTIN  LUTHER,  THE  PROPHET  OF 
THE  REFORMATION 

BT  PROFESSOR  ADOLF  HARNACK 

He  came  in  the  fulness  of  time  —  when  the 
rule  of  the  Roman  Church,  which  had  hitherto 
educated  the  peoples,  had  become  a  tyranny, 
when  States  and  nations  were  beginning  to 
throw  off  an  ecclesiastical  yoke  and  independ- 
ently to  organize  themselves  in  accordance  with 
their  own  laws. 

He  came  in  the  fulness  of  time  —  when  the 
economic  conditions  of  Europe,  both  through 
inner  developments  and  through  the  discovery 
of  distant  lands,  had  become  completely 
changed,  and  the  method  of  administration  of 
their  estates  by  the  Roman  priests  and  monks 
was  no  longer  tenable. 

He  came  in  the  fulness  of  time  —  when  me- 
diaeval churchly  science  had  outlived  its  use- 
fulness and  when  the  tree  of   knowledge  was 
producing  young,  fresh  shoots. 
109 


110         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

He  came  in  the  fulness  of  time  —  when  the 
classes  and  castes  of  the  Middle  Ages  were 
disintegrating,  and  when  everywhere  the  indi- 
vidual, supported  by  the  new  culture  of  the 
Renaissance,  was  striving  to  struggle  up  to  in- 
dependence. He  came  when  the  monastic  idea 
of  life  had  run  through  all  phases  of  its  de- 
velopment, and  when  man  was  beginning  to 
esteem  an  active  not  less  than  an  ascetic  life. 

He  came  in  the  fulness  of  time  —  when  lay- 
men were  no  longer  satisfied  with  priest  and 
sacrament,  but  were  seeking  God  himself,  and 
were  feeling  the  personal  responsibility  of  their 
own  souls.  He  came  as  man  was  recognizing 
the  precepts  of  the  Church  to  be  but  arbitrary 
laws,  and  her  traditions  as  only  innovations 
and  forgeries. 

He  was  no  universal  genius,  no  Plato,  no 
Leibnitz.  He  did  not  grasp  all  the  conditions 
of  his  time  ;  nay,  he  did  not  even  know  them 
all.  His  education  was  mediocre.  He  was  no 
sharp  and  refined  thinker,  he  was  no  humanist, 
he  was  no  critic  ;  his  vocation  was  not  to  rec- 
tify theoretical  errors  just  because  they  were 
errors.  The  sphere  of  science  was  not  his 
sphere ;  indeed,  he  had  an  instinctive  and 
never  entirely  conquered  suspicion  of  "  reason." 


Martin  Luther  111 

He  was  no  saint,  no  Francis,  who,  through 
the  glow  of  feeling,  through  the  sweetness  of 
his  spirit  or  the  power  of  his  sacrifice,  swept 
every  one  along  with  him.  He  was  also  no 
agitator,  no  orator,  who,  like  Savonarola,  could 
move  and  inflame  the  masses. 

Luther  was  no  cosmopolitan,  but  a  German 
with  the  marked  characteristics  of  his  nation,  a 
German  as  monk,  as  professor,  and  as  reformer. 
His  personality  has  never  been  understood  by 
the  Romanic  races ;  it  has  never  impressed 
them  ;  his  thoughts  alone  have  been  able  to 
take  root  among  them. 

How  was  this  man,  then,  able  to  become  the 
reformer  of  the  Western  Church  ?  How  was 
it  that  this  professor  in  a  little  German  univer- 
sity, in  the  midst  of  an  uncultivated  environ- 
ment, could  unfetter  the  great  movement  by 
which  the  new  epoch  in  the  history  of  the 
world  began  ?  How  did  it  happen  that, 
through  him,  "  the  time  was  fulfilled "  ?  He 
was  in  only  one  thing  great  and  mighty,  over- 
whelmingly and  irresistibly  the  master  of  his 
time,  victoriously  overcoming  the  history  of  a 
thousand  years  in  order  to  force  his  age  into 
new  channels.  He  teas  great  only  in  the  redis- 
covered knowledge  of  God  in  the  QospeU.     What 


112         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

it  means  to  have  a  God,  what  this  God  is,  how 
he  grasps  us,  and  how  we  can  apprehend  and 
hold  him  —  all  that  he  experienced  and  that  he 
proclaimed.  In  the  midst  of  the  night  of  his 
conventual  life,  as  he  strove  to  work  out  his 
salvation  in  fear  and  trembling,  it  dawned 
upon  him  like  the  sun  :  "  The  just  shall  live  hi/ 
faith.''''  In  the  midst  of  the  complex  system  of 
what  was  called  "  religion,"  in  the  midst  of  un- 
satisfying consolations  and  of  incomplete  pen- 
ances, he  lived  religion  itself  and  he  led  it  out 
into  freedom.  The  living  God  —  not  a  philo- 
sophical or  mystic  abstraction  —  the  manifest 
and  gracious  God,  was  a  God  to  be  reached  by 
every  Christian.  Unchangeable  reliance  of  the 
heart  upon  God,  personal  confidence  of  belief 
in  Him  who  said,  "I  am  thy  salvation,"  that 
was  to  Luther  the  whole  sum  of  religion.  Be- 
yond all  care  and  trouble,  beyond  all  arts  of 
the  ascetic,  beyond  all  theological  precepts,  he 
dared  to  grasp  God  himself,  and  in  this  deed  of 
faith  his  whole  life  won  its  independent  sturdi- 
ness.  "  Mit  unser  Macht  ist  Nichts  gethan" 
("With  our  might  is  nothing  done").  He 
knew  the  might  which  gives  to  our  lives 
both  firmness  and  freedom ;  he  knew  that 
might,  and   he  called  it  by  its   name.   Belief. 


Martin  Luther  113 

To  him  that  meant  no  longer  an  obedient  ac- 
ceptance of  ecclesiastical  dogmas,  it  meant  no 
knowledge,  no  deed,  but  simply  the  personal 
and  continual  giving  of  the  heart  to  God,  a 
daily  regeneration  of  man.  '  That  was  his  con- 
fession of  faith,  a  living,  busy,  active  thing,  a 
sure  trust,  making  one  joyful  and  eager  in  the 
sight  of  God  and  man,  something  which  makes 
us  always  ready  to  serve  or  to  suffer.  Despite 
all  evil,  yes,  despite  our  sin  and  guilt,  our  life 
is  hid  in  God,  when  w^e  trust  him  as  children 
trust  their  father.  That  was  the  vital  thought 
and  the  vital  power  of  Luther's  life. 

With  equal  certainty  he  perceived  and  ex- 
perienced the  other  idea,  the  idea  of  "  the  free- 
dom of  a  Christian."  This  freedom  was  to  him 
no  empty  emancipation  or  the  license  for  every 
whim.  Freedom  meant  to  Luther  the  libera- 
tion from  every  external  or  human  authority 
in  matters  of  belief  and  conscience.  Christian 
freedom  was  to  him  the  feeling  of  surety  that, 
united  with  God,  he  was  raised  above  the 
world,  sin,  death,  and  the  devil.  "If  God 
be  for  us,  who  can  be  against  us  ?  "  Every 
soul  that  has  found  God,  and  in  him  has  rec- 
ognized its  refuge,  is  free  —  so  proclaimed 
Luther. 


114        Prophets  of  the  Chi^istian  Faith 

Ein'  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott, 
Ein'  gute  Wehr  und  waffen. 

(A  mighty  fortress  is  our  God, 
A  bulwark  never  failing.) 

Let  it  be  here  remarked  that,  in  the  same 
hymn,  Luther  asks  : 

Eragst  du,  wer  er  ist  ? 
Er  heisset  Jesus  Christ, 
Der  Herr  Zebaoth, 
Und  ist  kein  and'rer  Gott. 

(Dost  ask  who  that  may  be  ? 
Christ  Jesus,  it  is  he, 
His  name,  Lord  Sabaoth ; 
Nor  is  there  other  God.) 

In  Jesus  Christ  alone  Luther  recognized 
God.  Outside  of  Christ  he  saw  only  a  dark, 
frightful,  and  enigmatical  Force.  In  Christ 
alone  he  saw  the  gracious  God.  Luther  was 
no  philosopher  who  would  recognize  God  in 
the  construction  of  the  world  ;  he  was  no  mys- 
tic, who  could  raise  God  out  of  his  own  soul's 
secret  depths.  He  was  a  faithful  son  of  the 
Christian  Church,  convinced  that  she  was  in 
the   right   with    her    commission   from    Jesus 


Martin  Luther  115 

Christ.  He  was  a  faithful  disciple  of  Paul, 
and  had  learned  from  him  that  all  knowledge 
of  God  lies  locked  up  in  the  sentence,  "  God  is 
the  father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  He  was 
a  faithful  disciple  of  Christ  himself,  who  said, 
"No  man  knoweth  the  Father  save  only  the 
Son,  and  him  to  whom  the  Son  will  reveal 
Him." 

Not  only  did  Luther  win  God-knowledge  in 
Jesus  Christ,  "the  mirror  of  God's  paternal 
heart,"  but  also  the  fact  that  Jesus  is  the 
Redeemer,  who  through  death  has  freed  us 
from  sin  and  blame.  Paul's  Gospel  is  also 
Luther's.  Before  the  latter,  no  one  in  the 
Church  really  understood  the  Epistles  to  the 
Romans  and  to  the  Galatians.  Just  because 
he  was  convinced  that  he  was  putting  the  old, 
dimmed  Gospel  again  in  the  light,  he  was  far 
from  the  thought  of  adding  anything  to  it. 
Never  had  he  another  plan  than  that  of  restor- 
ing the  old  belief;  never  did  he  think  to  fight 
against  the  Church,  but  always  for  the  Church 
against  a  false  and  soul-dangerous  practice  ; 
never  did  he  dream  that  the  Gospel  had  been 
really  lost  —  no,  but  it  was  to  be  freed  from  a 
captivity  into  which  the  Pope,  the  priests,  and 
the  theologians  had  led  it. 


116        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Great,  lasting  reformations  are  made  only  by 
conservative  men  ;  not  those  who  "  destroy," 
but  those  who  "  fulfil,"  bring  about  a  new  era. 
Luther  —  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart  the  most 
conservative  of  men  —  has  broken  the  mediae- 
val Catholic  system  in  pieces  for  millions  of 
souls,  and  thus  freed  the  history  of  progressive 
humanity  from  the  shackles  of  that  system. 
In  that  he  vindicated  the  new  and  yet  old 
Gospel,  in  that  he  freed  the  conscience  of  the 
individual  from  priest  and  statute,  he  struck 
deadly  blows  against  the  Church  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  For,  (1)  he  overturned  her  teaching  as 
to  salvation  —  salvation  not  being  a  thing 
brought  about  by  donations  and  merits,  but 
the  free  grace  of  God,  which  gives  us  the  con- 
viction that  we  are  his  children.  (2)  He  over- 
turned the  teaching  as  to  Christian  perfection 
—  true  Christian  life  does  not  consist  in  mo- 
nasticism,  but  in  an  active  life  of  fidelity  to  a 
calling,  in  humility,  patience,  and  the  service 
of  love  to  our  neighbour.  (3)  He  overturned 
the  teachings  as  regards  the  sacrament  —  God 
does  not  give  us  individual  and  different  frag- 
ments of  grace,  but  he  gives  us  the  forgiveness 
of  sins  and  with  it  all  grace,  yes,  he  gives  us 
himself   as  the    Bread  of   our  lives.     (4)    He 


Martin  Luther  117 

overturned  the  priestly  Church-system  —  God 
wills  that  all  his  children  shall  be  priests,  and 
he  has  instituted  but  one  office,  the  office  of 
proclaiming  the  Gospel  and  of  distributing  for- 
giveness. (5)  Luther  overturned  the  mediaeval 
church  services  —  God  will  not  be  honoured 
by  means  of  ceremonies,  masses,  oblations,  etc., 
but  only  through  praise  and  thanksgiving, 
pleading  and  prayer.  Every  church  service 
must  be  spiritual,  and  at  the  same  time  innately 
bound  with  service  to  one's  neighbour.  (6)  He 
overturned  the  false  authorities  of  Roman  Ca- 
tholicism. Not  the  Pope,  nor  the  Councils, 
not  even  the  letter  of  the  Bible  (yet  here,  in 
regard  to  the  Bible,  Luther  was  himself  not 
completely  clear),  has  unerring  authority,  but 
only  the  Gospel,  the  power  and  truth  of  which 
the  soul  inwardly  knows. 

All  these  points  have  to  do  with  religion 
alone.  Luther  determined  to  purify  religion 
and  to  free  it  from  every  strange  thing  which 
does  not  belong  to  it.  Besides  this  he  never 
had  another  independent  interest;  he  did  not 
care  about  bettering  the  world,  or  the  State,  or 
science,  for  themselves  alone.  Yet  right  here 
is  revealed  the  truth  of  the  saying :  "  Seek  ye 
first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  his  righteousness, 


118        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

and  all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 
In  that  Luther  thought  out  the  Gospel  in  all 
its  parts,  proclaimed  and  applied  it,  all  else  fell 
into  his  lap ;  in  that  he  liberated  religion  from 
mixture  with  that  which  is  foreign  to  it,  he 
also  liberated  the  natural  life  and  the  natural 
order  of  things.  He  put  everything  in  its  right 
place,  and  gave  everything  freedom  and  room 
for  development.  Everywhere  he  broke  apart 
unnatural  ties,  he  loosed  old  chains,  he  gave  air 
and  light. 

Theology  through  him  is  henceforth  to  be 
nothing  else  than  the  exposition  of  the  Gospel, 
of  how  it  has  founded  the  Christian  community 
and  still  keeps  it  together.  The  proof  of  the- 
ology is  no  longer  derived  from  external  au- 
thority or  strange  philosophical  speculations, 
but  by  the  simple  fact  of  Christ's  appearance, 
and  by  our  inward  experience. 

Philosophy  is  no  longer  a  feared  servant  or 
a  seductive  mistress  of  theology,  but  her  in- 
dependent sister.  Languages  and  history 
are  studied  conscientiously  and  faithfully,  in 
order  to  ascertain  the  right  meaning  of  every 
word. 

The  State  is  no  longer  regarded  as  a  half- 
sinful  product  of  compulsion  and  need,  and  the 


Martin  Luther  119 

creature  of  the  Churcli,  but  as  the  God-willed, 
Id  dependent  order  of  public  social  life. 

Law  does  not  longer  pass  as  a  dangerous 
middle  course,  something  between  the  might  of 
the  stronger  and  the  virtue  of  the  Christian, 
but  as  the  independent,  God-given  rule  of  in- 
tercourse, always  maintained  by  the  '' powers 
that  be." 

Marriage  is  no  longer  thought  of  as  a  divine 
concession  towards  the  weak,  but  as  a  free  bond 
between  the  sexes,  a  bond  instituted  by  God, 
and  free  from  tutelage  on  the  part  of  the 
Church,  and  as  the  school  of  the  highest 
morality. 

General  benefactions,  such  as  the  care  of  the 
poor,  are  not  now  so  much  pursued  because  of 
any  desire  to  assure  one's  own  salvation ;  they 
have  become  a  free  service  to  one's  neighbour, 
the  final  scope  and  only  reward  of  which  is 
effective  relief. 

Above  all  things,  however,  in  civil  (as  op- 
posed to  ecclesiastical)  callings,  activity  in 
house  and  farm,  in  trade  and  official  position, 
is  no  longer  looked  upon  suspiciously  as  if  it 
led  away  from  our  spiritual  vocation.  Men 
now  know  that  the  one  who  guides  a  household 
well,  educates  children  patiently  and  faithfully, 


120        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

fulfils  the  duties  of  a  calling  —  even  though 
that  one  be  but  a  poor  boy  or  a  lowly  maid  — 
stands  in  the  rightful  spiritual  place  and  is 
higher  than  all  monks  and  nuns. 

Over  the  great  period  which  we  call  the 
Middle  Ages,  over  the  chaos  of  non-indepen- 
dent and  intricate  forms,  there  soared  the  spirit 
of  belief,  which  had  recognized  its  own  nature 
and  therefore  had  also  recognized  its  limits. 
Under  its  sway,  all  things  that  had  a  right  to 
free  existence  now  strove  towards  independent 
development.  Before  Luther,  no  one  had  ever 
separated  so  clearly  and  distinguishingly  the 
great  departments  of  life,  and  given  to  each 
its  own  right.  Wonderful!  this  man  would 
not  teach  the  world  other  than  what  the  being, 
the  power,  and  the  comfort  of  the  Christian 
religion  is ;  but  in  that  he  recognized  this  most 
important  department  in  its  own  individual- 
ity, all  other  departments  came  to  their  own. 
Luther  preached  that  the  just  man  lives  by 
faith,  and  that  a  child  of  God  is  a  free  master 
over  all  things.  In  that  he  so  taught  he  indeed 
freed  men  and  things,  and  thus  showed  that 
"  the  time  was  fulfilled,"  for  he  was  called  that 
the  time  should  be  fulfilled. 

He  became  the  reformer.     Beside  him  Zwingli 


Martin  Luther  121 

and  Calvin  can  claim  but  second  places ;  tliey 
are  dependent  on  him.  Yes,  Ave  can  even  say: 
He  was  the  Reformation.  He  had  experienced 
the  Reformation  in  his  own  soul,  when  he  strug- 
gled in  the  cloister  with  the  creed  of  his  Church. 
Everything  which  he  afterwards  said,  wrote, 
and  did,  in  Wittenberg,  in  Worms,  and  in 
Coburg,  was  only  the  natural  consequence  of 
that  experience.  Out  of  his  breast,  from  the 
bottom  of  his  heart,  the  Reformation  streamed 
as  a  brook  out  of  hidden  springs  in  the  rock. 
In  one  sense  he  did  not  give  power  and  endur- 
ance to  the  Reformation  :  he  did  not  set  its 
bounds  and  aim,  but  the  Reformation  gushed 
from  his  spirit  like  a  fruitful  stream.  "  Here 
I  stand ;  I  can  do  no  other,"  said  he,  before 
Emperor  and  Empire.  When  the  lonely  man 
thus  spoke,  it  was  decided  that  he,  through  his 
faith,  like  Abraham,  should  become  the  father 
of  many  thousands  ;  it  was  decided  that  a  great 
epoch  in  the  history  of  mankind  had  finished 
its  course,  and  a  new  was  advancing. 

But  we  must  not  forget  that  it  was  four  hun- 
dred years  ago  that  Luther  taught.  The  con- 
venient belief  that  he  thought  out  everything 
for  us,  and  that  we  can  rest  on  his  teaching,  is 
a  foolish  one.     The  greatest  hero  is  always  only 


122        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

a  finisher  for  the  past ;  as  regards  the  future  he 
is  but  a  beginner.  He  who  does  not  under- 
stand Luther  so  that  he  learns  from  him  the 
spirit  with  which  to  solve  new  problems  and 
lessons,  and  so  that  he  endeavours  to  continue 
the  Reformer's  work,  understands  him  falsely. 
The  prophets  have  been  given  to  us,  not  that 
we  should  build  their  graves,  but  that  we 
should  inflame  our  hearts  through  their  faith 
and  their  courage. 


VIII 
JOHN  WESLEY 


VIII 
JOHN   WESLEY 

BT    THE   VERY    RET.    F.  W.    FARRAR,  D.D. 

It  has  often  happened  that  the  most  memor- 
able revolutions  or  reawakenments  in  the  moral 
and  spiritual  world  have  been  achieved  by  men 
who  were  not  remarkable  either  for  learning  or 
for  genius.  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  awoke  the 
Church  of  the  thirteenth  century  from  its  gor- 
geous dreams  of  dominion  and  luxury,  and  has 
eternized  his  name  on  the  bright  lists  of  saint- 
hood ;  but  the  humble  brown  figure  of  the 
poor  illiterate  wanderer  looks  absolutely  in- 
significant beside  the  purpureal  stateliness  of 
Pope  Innocent  III.  There  was  something 
almost  bourgeois  in  the  plain  homeliness  of 
St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  yet  in  founding  his  sis- 
terhoods of  mercy  he  inaugurated  the  chief 
movements  of  social  philanthropy.  Thomas 
Clarkson  and  John  Howard  were  simple  coun- 
try squires,  with  no  remarkable  endowments 
125 


126         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

of  any  kind  except  the  genius  of  goodness  and 
the  sensibility  of  compassion,  yet  the  one  ended 
the  slave  trade  and  emancipated  the  slave, 
and  the  other — traversing  Europe,  as  Edmund 
Burke  said,  "to  dive  into  the  depths  of  dun- 
geons, to  plunge  into  the  infection  of  hospitals, 
to  take  the  gauge  and  dimensions  of  misery,  de- 
pression, and  contempt "  —  purified  the  prisons 
of  the  Christian  world  from  their  enormous 
abuses  and  dehumanized  loathliness.  There 
were  many  noblemen  of  the  last  generation 
who  towered  over  the  late  Earl  of  Shaftes- 
bury in  the  splendour  of  their  attainments  and 
their  oratory,  yet  none  of  them,  not  one  of 
the  Archbishops,  Bishops,  and  great  ecclesias- 
tics of  his  day,  effected  one  tithe  of  his  mighty 
work  of  beneficence  for  the  poor  women  of  the 
mines  and  collieries,  for  the  factory  children, 
for  the  little  ''climbing  boys,"  for  the  waifs 
and  strays  and  gutter-children  of  London,  for 
the  costermongers,  for  maltreated  lunatics,  and 
for  hosts  of  the  oppressed.  To  this  order  of 
men,  though  he  was  superior  to  them  in  learn- 
ing, belonged  John  Wesley.  He  found  a  Church 
forgetful  and  neglectful  of  its  duties,  somnolent 
in  the  plethora  of  riches,  and  either  unmindful 
or  unwisely  mindful  of  the  poor.     He  found 


John  Wesley  127 

churches  empty,  dirty,  neglected,  crumbling 
into  hideous  disrepair ;  he  found  the  work  of 
the  ministry  performed  in  a  manner  scandal- 
ously perfunctory ;  he  found  in  the  ranks  of 
the  priesthood  more  than  enow 

of  such  as,  for  their  bellies'  sake, 
Creep,  and  intrude,  and  climb  into  the  fold. 

And,  when  they  list,  their  lean  and  flashy  songs 
Grate  on  their  scrannel  pipes  of  wretched  straw ; 
The  hungry  sheep  look  up,  and  are  not  fed, 
But,  swoln  with  wind   and   the   rank   mist   they 

draw, 
Eot  inwardly,  and  foul  contagion  spread ; 
Besides  what  the  grim  wolf,  with  privy  paw, 
Daily  devours  apace,  and  nothing  said. 

Doubtless  in  his  day,  as  in  Milton's,  it  might 
have  been  said, 

But  that  two-handed  engine  at  the  door 
Stands  ready  to  smite  once,  and  smite  no  more. 

But  John  Wesley,  becoming  magnetic  with 
moral  sincerity,  flashed  into  myriads  of  hearts 
fat  as  brawn,  cold  as  ice,  hard  as  the  nether 
millstone,  the  burning  spark  of  his  own  intense 
convictions,    and   thus   he   saved   the    Church, 


128        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

which  at  first  had  nothing  for  him  but  sneers, 
.  hatred,  and  persecution.  Wesley  never  was  an 
enemy  to  the  Church  of  England.  He  loved 
the  Church  which  hated  him.  He  included  her 
name  in  his  daily  "grace  before  meat."  He 
died  in  her  full  communion.  He  would  have 
said,  as  sincerely  as  Edmund  Burke,  "  I  wish  to 
see  the  Church  of  England  great  and  powerful  ; 
I  wish  to  see  her  foundation  laid  low  and  deep  ,• 
I  would  have  her  open  wide  her  hospitable 
gates  by  a  liberal  comprehension ;  I  would 
have  her  a  common  blessing  to  the  world,  an 
example,  if  not  an  instructor,  to  those  who 
have  not  the  happiness  to  belong  to  her ;  I 
would  have  her  give  a  lesson  of  peace  to  man- 
kind, that  a  vexed  and  wandering  generation 
may  be  taught  to  seek  refuge  and  toleration  in 
the  bosom  of  her  maternal  charity."  And  he 
distinctly  saved  the  Church  of  England  from 
the  Nemesis  of  just  retribution,  which  but  for 
him  would  sooner  or  later  have  overwhelmed 
her  in  indiscriminate  collapse,  and  might  not 
improbably  have  buried  under  her  heaps  of 
ruin  all  that  was  best  in  the  great  heritage  of 
English  religion.  He  set  her  the  example 
of  indefatigable  activity,  of  immense  and  un- 
grudging self-sacrifice,  of  that  true  beauty  of 


John   Wesley  129 

holiness  which  shines  in  the  life  of  every  Chris- 
tian who  "makes  his  moral  being  his  prime 
care,"  and  gives  the  actual,  not  the  merely 
nominal,  sovereignty  to  the  beliefs  which  he 
professes  to  regard  as  supreme.  He  saved  the 
Church  of  England,  though  at  first  she  so  an- 
grily and  contemptuously  rejected  him,  and, 
just  as  from  the  mouth  of  Socrates  issued  forth 

Mellifluous  streams  which  watered  all  the  schools 
Of  Academics  old  and  new,  with  those 
Surnamed  Peripatetics,  and  the  sect 
Epicurean,  and  the  Stoic  severe, 

so,  from  the  impulse  which  Wesley  gave,  orig- 
inated almost  every  form  of  special  religious 
enthusiasm  since  his  day.  Thus  he  became  one 
of  the  most  disinterested  of  those  benefactors 
of  mankind  who  "  have  raised  strong  arms  to 
bring  heaven  a  little  nearer  to  our  earth." 

One  great  virtue  in  his  character  was  that 
sovereign  religious  tolerance  which  is  so  in- 
finitely rare  amid  the  divergences  of  religious 
shibboleths.  In  the  first  century  the  heathen 
said,  "  See  how  these  Christians  love  one  an- 
other " ;  but,  long  before  the  third  century,  the 
odium  theologicum  had  culminated  in  those  exe- 
crable forms   of   religious  virulence  which,  if 


130        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

"  love  "  be  indeed  the  fulfilling  of  the  law,  are 
the  very  antithesis  of  the  Christlike  spirit,  at 
which  all  profess  to  aim  who  take  Christ  for  an 
ensample  that  they  should  walk  in  his  steps. 
It  is  a  splendid  testimony  to  Wesley's  moral 
insight  and  spiritual  greatness  that  "no  re- 
former the  world  has  ever  seen  so  united  faith- 
fulness to  the  essential  doctrines  of  Revelation 
with  charity  towards  men  of  every  Church  and 
creed."  This  spirit  of  John  Wesley  has  been 
found,  theoretically  at  least,  only  in  the  best 
and  greatest  Christians. 

Bishop  Sanderson  pointed  out  to  some  of  the 
narrowest  of  the  post-Reformation  sectaries  that 
"  the  Church  was  not  to  be  confined  to  the  nar- 
row pingle  of  a  room  in  Amsterdam."  William 
Penn  uttered  the  great  sentiment,  so  dear  to 
the  heart  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  that  the  meek, 
the  just,  the  pious,  the  devout,  are  everywhere 
of  one  religion,  and  that  when  death  hath  taken 
off  these  masks  they  will  know  and  love  one  an- 
other. The  devout  Dominican  Henri  Feyrrane 
saw,  as  Lacordaire  also  saw,  that  the  worst  pos- 
sible policy  is  "  to  make  the  gate  of  the  Church 
bristle  with  anathemas,  as  with  razors  and 
pitchforks."  But  too  many  nominal  Chris- 
tians have  forgotten  that  all  these  words  and 


John   Wesley  131 

actions  tend  to  reduce  the  Church  to  the  same 
deplorable  chaos  of  mutual  hatreds  and  fierce 
disdain  which  Christ  found  among  the  Phari- 
sees and  Sadducees  of  Jerusalem,  when  he 
chose  the  hated  and  heretical  Samaritan  as 
his  exemplary  type  of  the  goodness  which  loved 
its  neighbour. 

I  dwell  on  this  high  virtue  of  Wesley  because 
it  is  so  exceptional,  and  because  it  was  never 
more  needed  than  in  these  days.  Writing 
in  advanced  age  to  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  he 
said :  "  Alas  !  my  Lord,  is  this  a  time  to  per- 
secute any  man  for  conscience'  sake?  I  be- 
seech you  do  as  you  would  be  done  to.  You 
are  a  man  of  sense  ;  you  are  a  man  of  learning  ; 
nay,  I  verily  believe  (what  is  of  infinitely  more 
value)  you  are  a  man  of  piety.  Then  think 
and  let  think."  Again,  how  wise  are  the  re- 
marks in  the  preface  to  his  Sermons  i  "  Some 
may  say  I  have  mistaken  the  way  myself,  though 
I  have  undertaken  to  teach  others.  It  is  very 
possible  that  I  have.  But  I  trust,  whereinso- 
ever I  have  been  mistaken,  my  mind  is  open  to 
conviction.  I  sincerely  desire  to  be  better  in- 
formed. What  I  know  not,  teach  thou  me. 
''Da  mihi  scire^^  as  says  St.  Augustine,  '  quod 
sciendum  est.''     If  I  linger  in  the  path  I  have 


132        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

been  accustomed  to  tread,  .  .  .  take  me  by  the 
hand  and  lead  me.  .  .  .  But  be  not  discour- 
aged if  I  ask  you  not  to  beat  me  down  in  order 
to  quicken  my  pace.  May  I  request  you  fur- 
ther not  to  give  me  hard  names  in  order  to 
bring  me  into  the  right  way  ?  .  .  .  For  God's 
sake,  if  it  be  possible,  let  us  not  provoke  one 
another  to  wrath.  Let  us  not  kindle  in  each 
other  this  fire  of  hell.  If  we  could  discern 
truth  by  that  dreadful  light,  would  it  not  be 
loss  rather  than  gain?  For  how  far  is  love, 
even  with  many  wrong  opinions,  to  be  preferred 
before  truth  itself  without  love  !  We  may  die 
without  the  knowledge  of  many  truths,  and  yet 
be  carried  into  Abraham's  bosom.  But  if  we 
die  without  love,  what  will  knowledge  avail? 
Just  as  much  as  it  avails  the  devil  and  his 
angels !  " 

The  ground  for  this  wise  and  noble  tolerance, 
which  is  one  of  Wesley's  special  lessons  to  this 
religiously  distracted  age,  was  his  clear  realiza- 
tion of  the  truth  —  demonstrated  by  all  history 
—  that  while  unity  of  spirit  is  attainable,  uni- 
formity of  organization  is  not ;  that  while  there 
can  be  but  one  flock  of  the  Good  Shepherd, 
there  always  have  been  and  to  the  end  of  time 
there  will  be  many  folds.     Dean   Stanley  de- 


John   Wesley  133 

lighted  in  a  story  —  I  know  not  its  source  and 
will  not  vouch  for  its  authenticity  —  which  he 
called  "  Wesley's  Dream."  It  told  how  Wesley 
dreamt  that,  wandering  to  the  gate  of  Gehenna,  -^ 
he  asked  whether  there  were  any  Romanists, 
any  Anglicans,  any  Baptists,  any  Calvinists, 
any  Independents  there,  and  was  told  in  each 
case,  "  Yes,  a  great  many,"  and  w^as  yet  more 
deeply  pained  when,  asking,  "  And  are  there 
any  Wesleyans  here?"  it  was  still  answered, 
"Yes,  a  great  many."  Then,  returning  to  the 
gate  of  Heaven,  he  asked,  "  Are  there  any 
Romanists  here  ?  "  "None  whatever."  "Any 
Anglicans?"  "  None  whatever."  "Any  Bap- 
tists?" "None  whatever."  "Any  Calvin- 
ists ?  "  "  None  whatever. "  "  Any  Wesleyans  ?  " 
Still  none  whatever.  "  Whom  then  have  you 
here?"  he  asked  in  amazement.  "We  have 
none  but  Christians  here,"  was  the  answer; 
"we  know  no  other  name."  Whether  the 
story  was  a  pleasing  allegory  of  the  Dean's 
or  not,  I  cannot  tell ;  but  this  I  know,  that 
Wesley's  sermon  on  the  Catholic  Spirit  would 
have  the  honour  of  being  thought  shockingly 
lax  by  bigots  of  every  denomination,  yet  all 
true  Christians  might  well  say  with  him,  "  I 
desire  to  have  a  league,  offensive  and  defensive, 


134        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

with  every  soldier  of  Christ.  We  have  all  not 
only  one  Lord,  one  faith,  one  baptism,  but  we 
are  all  also  engaged  in  one  warfare." 

As  another  of  Wesley's  exemplary  qualities 
I  would  single  out  his  sovereign  common  sense, 
which  is  also  an  endowment  much  liable  to 
overthrow  by  the  violences  of  egotistical  dog- 
matism. Though  many  have  identified  his 
teaching  mainly  with  certain  formulae,  Wesley 
had  no  faith  in  the  bare  reiteration  of  shib- 
boleths. His  idea  of  a  ''  Gospel  sermon  "  was 
not  the  narrowly  ignorant  one  which  supposes 
it  to  consist  in  the  incessant  repetition  of 
phrases  —  phrases  often  originally  meaningless 
to  many  of  those  who  used  them,  or  which 
have  become  stereotyped  into  mere  inanity 
and  fetichism.  In  his  diary  for  November 
20,  1785,  he  writes:  "I  preached  in  Bethnal 
Green,  and  spoke  as  plainly  as  I  possibly  could, 
on  having  a  form  of  godliness  but  denying  the 
power  thereof.  And  this  I  judged  far  more 
suitable  to  such  a  congregation  than  talking 
about  justification  by  faith."  How  free,  again, 
from  all  hysteric  excitability  was  the  entire 
attitude  of  his  religion  !  Some  one  had  been 
talking  in  an  exaggerated  and  fantastic  way 
about   death,    and   asking  what   he  would    do 


John   Wesley  135 

if  he  knew  that  he  would  die  the  next  day. 
"What  should  I  do?"  he  said.  "Exactly 
what  I  shall  do  now.  I  should  call  and  talk 
to  Mr.  So-and-so,  and  Mrs.  So-and-so  ;  and 
dine  at  such  an  hour,  and  preach  in  the  even- 
ing, and  have  supper,  and  then  I  should  go 
to  bed  and  sleep  as  soundly  as  ever  I  did  in 
my  life."  His  feeling  about  death  was  that, 
so  far  from  being  terrible,  it  was  man's  great 
birthright ;  and  he  would  say,  with  the  poet: 

To  you  the  thought  of  death  is  terrible, 

Having  such  hold  on  life ;  to  me  it  is  not ; 

No  more  than  is  the  lifting  of  a  latch, 

Or  as  a  step  into  the  open  air 

Out  of  a  tent  already  luminous 

With  light  that  shines  through  its  transparent  folds. 

Again,  it  was  no  small  matter  that,  in  an 
age  so  corrupt  and  decadent  as  his,  in  which 
the  dregs  of  sensuality  and  worldliness  poured 
over  the  glorious  England  of  Puritanism  by 
the  despicable  epoch  of  the  Restoration  had 
reduced  religion  to  a  Dead  Sea  of  torpid  un- 
reality, Wesley,  like  the  great  Hebrew  prophets 
of  old,  should  have  stood  forth  as  a  preacher 
of  righteousness.  No  preacher  or  reformer 
can  effect  great  results  unless  he  insists  upon 


136        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Christ's  plain  teaching  that,  if  we  would  ever 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  we  must 
keep  the  commandments.  Late  in  his  career 
he  said  :  "  Near  fifty  years  ago  a  great  and 
good  man,  Dr.  Potter,  then  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  gave  me  an  advice  for  which  I 
have  ever  since  had  occasion  to  bless  God. 
'If  you  desire  to  be  extensively  useful,  do 
not  spend  your  time  and  strength  in  contend- 
ing for  or  against  such  things  as  are  of  a 
disputable  nature,  but  in  testifying  against 
open  and  notorious  vice  and  in  prompting 
real  spiritual  holiness.'  Let  us  keep  to  this, 
leaving  a  thousand  disputable  points  to  those 
that  have  no  better  business  than  to  toss  the 
ball  of  controversy  to  and  fro,  and  let  us  bear 
a  faithful  testimony  in  our  several  stations 
against  all  ungodliness  and  unrighteousness, 
and  with  all  our  might  recommend  that  inward 
and  outward  holiness  without  which  no  man 
shall  see  the  Lord." 

It  may  be,  as  I  have  said,  that  in  talent,  in 
imagination,  in  learning,  in  the  pure  and  un- 
definable  quality  of  genius,  Wesley  was  not 
the  equal  of  many  of  his  contemporaries ;  but 
which  among  them  all  equalled  him  in  versa- 
tility of   beneficence,  in  zeal  of   self-sacrifice, 


John   Wesley  137 

in  the  munificence  of  his  generosity,  or  in  the 
lustre  of  the  example  which  he  has  left  to  all 
the  world  ?  Consider  his  supreme  disinterest- 
edness, his  unparalleled  courage,  his  indefati- 
gable toils.  How  many  have  there  been  in 
all  the  centuries  who  made  such  an  absolute 
offering  of  his  money  to  God,  and,  living  on 
less  than  many  a  curate's  salary,  gave  away 
£40,000?  Consider,  again,  his  unparalleled 
courage.  How  many  have  shown  equal  un- 
dauntedness  ?  Men  admire  the  courage  of  the 
soldier  who  heads  the  forlorn  hope  through 
the  cross-fire  of  the  batteries,  of  the  sailor  or 
of  the  fireman  who,  at  personal  risk,  plucks 
from  destruction  an  imperilled  life  ;  but  such 
physical  courage  is  a  million  times  cheaper 
and  more  common  than  that  of  the  scholar, 
the  gentleman,  the  clergyman,  who,  in  that 
age,  day  after  day,  month  after  month,  year 
after  year,  in  England,  in  America,  in  Scot- 
land, in  Wales,  in  Ireland,  even  in  the  Isle  of 
Man,  could,  voluntarily  and  out  of  the  pure 
love  of  souls,  face  raging  mobs  and  descend  to 
what  was  then  regarded  as  the  vulgar  humilia- 
tion of  preaching  in  the  open  air.  And  higher 
even  than  this  was  the  moral  and  spiritual 
courage  which,  in  the  calm  of  blameless  inno- 


138        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

cence,  could  treat  the  most  atrocious  and  the 
most  persistent  calumnies  with  the  disdainful 
indifference  of  unblemished  rectitude.  When 
even  Charles  Wesley  was  thrown  into  a  fever 
of  agonized  excitement  by  the  scandal  against 
his  brother  caused  by  his  wife's  publication 
of  stolen,  forged,  or  interpolated  letters,  and 
wanted  him  to  stay  in  London  and  expose  the 
slander,  John  Wesley  remained  perfectly  calm, 
knowing  that  no  real  harm  can  befall 

The  virtuous  mind  that  ever  walks  attended 
By  a  strong-siding  champion,  Conscience. 

"Brother,"  he  said,  "when  I  devoted  to  God 
my  ease,  my  time,  my  life,  did  I  exempt  my 
reputation?"  Then  consider  his  indefatigable 
toils  —  those  sixty-eight  years  of  service  ;  the 
4400  miles  which  he  travelled  yearly  on  the 
execrable  roads  of  those  days ;  the  225,000 
miles  which  he  traversed  in  his  lifetime  ;  the 
42,400  sermons  —  sometimes  as  many  as  fifteen 
a  week  —  which  he  preached  even  after  his  re- 
turn from  Georgia  —  preached  mostly  in  the 
open  air,  and  sometimes  to  as  many  as  20,000 
souls;  those  endless  meetings,  those  burden- 
some anxieties,  those  numerous  publications, 
that  love  of  so  many  communities,  continued 


John    Wesley  139 

amid  incessant  attacks  of  the  mob,  the  pulpit, 
and  the  press,  and  scarcely  ever  relaxed  till 
the  patriarchal  age  of  eighty-eight.  Could  a 
clergyman  of  any  denomination,  amid  the  work 
which,  in  comparison  to  his  toils,  is  but  ease 
and  supineness,  think  it  anything  but  an 
honour  to  profess  reverence  for  the  memory 
of  one  who  so  heroically  lived  and  so  nobly 
died?  Although  the  world  and  the  Church 
have  learned  to  be  comparatively  generous  to 
Wesley  now  that  a  hundred  years  have  sped 
away,  and  though  the  roar  of  contemporary 
scandal  has  long  since  ceased,  I  doubt  whether 
even  now  he  is  at  all  adequately  appreciated. 
I  doubt  whether  many  are  aware  of  the  extent 
to  which  to  this  day  the  impulse  to  every  great 
work  of  philanthropy  and  social  reformation 
has  been  due  to  his  energy  and  insight.  The 
British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  the  Relig- 
ious Tract  Society,  the  London  Missionary 
Society,  even  the  Church  Missionary  Society, 
owe  not  a  little  to  his  initiative.  The  vast 
spread  of  religious  instruction  by  weekly  peri- 
odicals, and  the  cheap  press  with  all  its  stu- 
pendous consequences,  were  inaugurated  by 
him.  He  gave  a  great  extension  to  Sunday- 
schools  and  the  work  of  Robert  Raikes.     He 


140        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

gave  a  great  impulse  both  to  national  educa- 
tion and  to  technical  education,  and  in  starting 
the  work  of  Silas  Told,  the  Foundry  Teacher, 
he  anticipated  the  humble  and  holy  work  of 
John  Pounds,  the  Portsmouth  cobbler.  He 
started  in  his  own  person  the  funeral  reform, 
which  is  only  now  beginning  to  attract  public 
attention,  when  in  his  will  he  directed  that 
at  his  obsequies  there  should  be  no  hearse,  no 
escutcheon,  no  coach,  no  pomp.  He  visited 
prisons  and  ameliorated  the  lot  of  prisoners 
before  John  Howard ;  and  his  very  last  letter 
was  written  to  stimulate  William  Wilberforce 
in  his  Parliamentary  labours  for  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  slave.  When  we  add  to  this  the 
revival  of  fervent  worship  and  devout  hymnol- 
ogy  among  Christian  congregations,  and  their 
deliverance  from  the  drawling  doggerel  of 
Sternhold  and  Hopkins,  and  the  frigid  nullities 
of  Tate  and  Brady,  we  have  indeed  shown  how 
splendid  was  the  list  of  his  achievements,  and 
that,  as  Isaac  Taylor  says,  he  furnished  ''the 
starting-point  for  our  modern  religious  history 
in  all  that  is  characteristic  of  the  present  time." 
And  yet,  even  in  this  long  and  splendid  cata- 
logue, we  have  not  mentioned  his  greatest  and 
most  distinctive  work,  which  was  that  through 


John    Wesley  141 

him  to  the  poor  the  Gospel  was  preached.  Let 
Whitefield  have  the  credit  of  having  been  the 
first  to  make  the  green  grass  his  pulpit  and  the 
heaven  his  sounding-board ;  but  Wesley  in- 
stantly followed,  at  all  costs,  the  then  daring 
example,  and,  through  all  evil  report  and  all 
furious  opposition,  he  continued  it  until  at 
last,  at  Kingswood,  at  the  age  of  eighty-one, 
he  preached  in  the  open  air,  under  the  shade 
of  trees  which  he  himself  had  planted,  and  sur- 
rounded by  the  children  and  children's  children 
of  his  old  disciples,  who  had  long  since  passed 
away.  Overwhelming  evidence  exists  to  show 
what  preaching  was  before  and  in  his  day  ; 
overwhelming  evidence  exists  to  show  what 
the  Church  and  people  of  England  were  be- 
fore and  in  his  day  —  how  dull,  how  vapid, 
how  soulless,  how  Christless  was  the  preach- 
ing ;  how  torpid,  how  Laodicean  was  the 
Church,  how  godless,  how  steeped  in  immo- 
rality was  the  land.  To  Wesley  was  mainly 
granted  the  task,  for  which  he  was  set  apart 
by  the  hands  of  invisible  consecration,  the  task 
which  even  an  archangel  might  have  envied  him, 
of  awakening  a  mighty  revival  of  religious 
life  in  those  dead  pulpits,  in  that  slumbering 
Church,  in  that  corrupt  society.     His  was  the 


142         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

religious  sincerity  which  not  only  founded  the 
Wesleyan  community,  but,  working  through 
the  heart  of  the  very  Church  which  had  de- 
spised him,  flashed  fire  into  her  whitening  em- 
bers. Changing  its  outward  forms,  the  work 
of  John  Wesley  caused  first  the  Evangelical 
movement,  then  the  High  Church  movement ; 
and,  in  its  enthusiasm  of  humanity,  has  even 
reappeared  in  all  that  is  best  in  the  humble 
Salvationists,  who  learned  from  the  example 
of  Wesley  what  Bishop  Lightf oot  called  "  that 
lost  secret  of  Christianity,  the  compulsion  of 
human  souls."  Recognizing  no  utterance  of 
authority  as  equally  supreme  with  that  which 
came  to  him  from  the  Sinai  of  conscience,  Wes- 
ley did  the  thing  and  scorned  the  consequence. 
His  was  the  voice  which  offered  hope  to  the 
despairing  and  welcome  to  the  outcast.  His 
was  the  voice  which,  sounding  forth  over  the 
Valley  of  Dry  Bones,  cried,  "  Come  from  the 
four  winds,  O  breath,  and  breathe  upon  these 
slain  that  they  may  live."     The  poet  says : 

Of  those  three  hundred  grant  but  three 
To  make  a  new  Thermopylse. 

And  when  I  think  of  John  Wesley,  the  organ- 
izer, of   Charles  Wesley,  the  poet,  of   George 


John    Wesley  143 

Whitefield,  the  orator  of  this  mighty  movement, 
I  feel  inclined  to  say  of  those  three  self-sacrific- 
ing and  holy  men,  Grant  but  even  one  to  help 
in  the  mighty  work  which  yet  remains  to  be 
accomplished !     Had  we  but  three  such  now, 

Hoary-headed  selfishness  would  feel 
His  death-blow,  and  would  totter  to  his  grave ; 
A  brighter  light  attend  the  human  day, 
When  every  transfer  of  earth's  natural  gift 
Should  be  a  commerce  of  good  words  and  works. 

We  have,  it  is  true,  hundreds  of  faithful  work- 
ers in  the  Church  of  England  and  in  other  re- 
ligious communities.  But  for  the  slaying  of 
dragons,  the  rekindlement  of  irresistible  enthu- 
siasm, the  redress  of  intolerable  wrongs,  a 
Church  needs  many  Pentecosts  and  many  Res- 
urrections. And  these,  in  the  providence  of 
God,  are  brought  about,  not  by  committees 
and  conferences  and  common  workers,  but  by 
men  who  escape  the  average ;  by  men  who 
come  forth  from  the  multitude ;  by  men  who, 
not  content  to  trudge  on  in  the  beaten  paths 
of  commonplace  and  the  cart-ruts  of  routine, 
go  forth,  according  to  their  Lord's  command, 
into  the  highways  and  hedges ;  by  men  in 
whom  the  love  of   God  burns  like  a  consum- 


144         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

ing  flame  upon  the  altar  of  the  heart ;  by  men 
who  have  become  electric  to  make  myriads  of 
other  souls  thrill  with  their  own  holy  zeal. 
Such  men  are  necessarily  rare,  but  God's  rich- 
est boon  to  any  nation,  to  any  society,  to  any 
church,  is  the  presence  and  work  of  such  a 
man  —  and  such  a  man  was  John  Wesley. 

The  bust  placed  in  Westminster  Abbey  to 
the  memory  of  John  Wesley,  more  than  twenty 
years  ago,  was  a  very  tardy  recognition  of  the 
vast  debt  of  gratitude  which  England  owes  to 
him.  It  stands  hard  by  the  cenotaph  of  that 
other  illustrious  Nonconformist,  Isaac  Watts, 
and  gives  the  beautiful  presentment  of  the  aged 
face  of  the  evangelist  and  the  fine  features  of 
Charles,  his  poet-brother.  In  the  solemn  aisle 
thousands  of  visitors  to  our  great  Temple  of 
Silence  and  Reconciliation  may  read  three  of 
his  great  sayings  —  one,  so  full  of  holy  energy, 
"  I  look  on  all  the  w^orld  as  my  parish " ;  an- 
other, so  full  of  bright  and  holy  confidence, 
"  God  buries  his  workmen,  but  continues  his 
work " ;  the  third,  when,  on  his  death-bed, 
uplifting  victoriously  his  feeble  and  emaciated 
arm,  he  said :  "The  best  of  all  is,  God  is  with  us." 
"Yes  ! "  he  exclaimed  again,  in  a  tone  of  victori- 
ous rapture,  "the  best  of  all  is,  God  is  with  us." 


IX 

JONATHAN   EDWARDS 


IX 

JONATHAN   EDWARDS 

BY    THE    REV.    A.    M.    FAIRBAIRN,    D.D. 

Jonathan  Edwards  is  a  thinker  difficult 
to  appreciate  and  very  easy  to  misunderstand. 
His  faults  lie  on  the  surface,  while  his  merits 
are  to  be  discovered  only  by  sympathetic 
study.  He  is  not  only  the  greatest  of  all  the 
thinkers  that  America  has  produced,  but  also 
the  highest  speculative  genius  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  What  in  him  was  occasional  most 
impressed  his  own  generation  and  most  easily 
arrests  the  eye  of  ours.  What  in  him  was  per- 
manent retreats  from  the  hands  that  hastily 
glean  in  the  field  of  literature  and  religion. 
What  most  impresses  a  cocksure  and  sceptical 
critic  like  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  is  the  awfulness 
of  Edwards's  descriptions  of  sin  and  its  punish- 
ment ;  and  he  marvels  that  any  writer  could 
say  anything  concerning  him  without  dwelling 
on  his  doctrine  of  hell.  But  the  grim  and  ter- 
147 


148        Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

rible  sermons  which  Stephen  quotes  as  if  they 
were  the  essence  of  Edwards's  mind  were  not 
the  creations  of  his  reason,  which  was  Ed- 
wards's master  faculty,  but  the  work  of  his 
imagination  in  a  peculiar  mood  —  as  it  were 
epic  pictures  thrown  out  while  it  was  intoxi- 
cated with  a  spiritual  passion  or  drenched  by 
the  wave  of  religious  enthusiasm  then  rolling 
over  New  England.  In  truth,  the  distinctive 
theology  of  Edwards  was  of  quite  another 
order,  the  creation  of  a  reason  all  alive  with 
speculative  passion,  and  moved  as  if  by  an  in- 
finite hunger  for  the  divine.  In  him  religious 
affection  was  exalted  and  transfigured  by  an 
illuminative  yet  inexorable  reason,  a  thought 
that,  urged  by  the  necessity  of  its  own  being, 
could  know  no  rest  till  it  had^  not  simply 
grasped  the  skirts,  but,  as  it  were,  penetrated 
to  the  very  heart  of  deity.  In  a  far  higher 
degree  than  Spinoza  he  was  a  "  God-intoxicated 
man,"  and  his  religious  affection  more  than 
Spinoza's  intellectual  love  made  man  one  in 
will  through  being  one  in  heart  with  God. 
The  development  from  Edwards  emphasized 
too  much  what  was  occasional,  while  it  empha- 
sized too  little  what  was  permanent ;  and  so 
the   New  England   becomes   more  a  scholastic 


Jonathan  Edivards  149 

than  a  speculative  theology,  while,  if  it  had 
been  true  to  the  genius  and  soul  of  Edwards, 
it  would  have  been  more  speculative  and  less 
scholastic. 

In  the  attempt  to  understand  him  we  have 
first  to  realize  the  comparative  isolation  in 
which  he  lived,  and  therefore  the  independence 
with  which  he  worked.  If  we  put  him  back 
into  his  time  without  recollection  of  his  place, 
no  man  could  seem  less  the  son  of  his  century. 
He  was  born  in  1703,  a  year  before  Locke  died. 
In  England  deism  had  commenced  its  belliger- 
ent and  barren  career.  Berkeley  had  entered 
Trinity  College,  and  was  jotting  down  in  his 
commonplace  book  the  speculations  that  were 
later  to  become  a  new  "  Theory  of  Vision,"  and 
furnish  the  "  Principles  of  Human  Know- 
ledge." Toland  was  busy  proving  Christianity 
not  mysterious,  and  arguing  for  a  new  theism 
which  should  make  God  all  in  all.  Of  those 
who  may  be  regarded  as  more  strictly  his  con- 
temporaries, Joseph  Butler  entered  Oriel  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  just  about  the  time  Edwards 
entered  Yale.  David  Hume,  eight  years  his 
junior,  became,  like  Edwards,  a  student  of 
Locke,  but,  unlike  him,  so  interpreted  Locke 
as  to  deduce  from  him  a  system  of   universal 


150        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

doubt,  which  did  not,  like  that  of  Descartes, 
spare  thought  and  find  through  the  ego  a  way 
into  reasoned  belief.  In  France,  in  the  very 
year  of  Edwards's  birth,  Voltaire  entered,  a  boy 
of  nine,  the  great  Jesuit  School,  the  College 
Louis  le  Grand,  and  began  to  prepare  himself 
to  conduct  his  crusade  —  in  its  essence  more 
Christian  than  those  of  the  Middle  Ages  — 
against  the  tyranny  of  the  unreal  and  make- 
believe  in  religion.  While  Edwards  was  pas- 
tor in  Northampton  Rousseau  was  indulging 
himself  in  all  the  luxury  of  sentiment,  and 
feeling  his  way  towards  the  limitation  of  the 
individual  and  the  construction  of  society 
through  the  "Social  Contract."  As  Edwards, 
diffident  in  secular  things  while  greatly  daring 
in  intellectual,  was  describing  to  the  corpora- 
tion of  Princeton  his  "  peculiarly  unhappy  con- 
stitution, attended  with  flaccid  solids,  vapid, 
siezy,  and  scarce  fluids,  and  a  low  tide  of 
spirits  ;  often  occasioning  a  kind  of  childish 
weakness  and  contemptibleness  of  speech,  pres- 
ence, and  demeanour,  with  a  disagreeable  dul- 
ness  and  stiffness,  much  unfitting  me  for 
conversation,  but  more  especially  for  the  gov- 
ernment of  a  college,"  and  hesitating  to  accept 
the  position  offered  to  him  —  a  younger  con- 


Jonathan  Edivards  151 

temporary  in  Germany,  Lessing,  was  turning 
his  thoughts  to  the  reform  of  the  theatre,  and 
to  a  more  scientific  interpretation  of  religion 
and  its  history. 

But  Edwards  in  his  New  England  home 
lived  apart  from  all  these  European  movements 
and  influences.  They  could,  indeed,  hardly  be 
said  to  have  touched  him.  As  a  student  he 
had  studied  the  ''  Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing," and  through  it  discovered  at  once 
his  faculty  and  problem.  In  Dr.  Samuel  John- 
son of  Stratford,  and  in  Cutler,  his  tutor,  he 
had  met  men  who  knew  something  of  Berkeley; 
the  former,  in  particular,  being  a  convinced 
idealist.  And,  indeed,  while  he  was  beginning 
his  career  as  a  pastor,  Berkeley  was  attempting 
to  make  a  home  for  himself  in  Rhode  Island. 
But  while  there  are  points  where  he  coincides 
with  Berkeley,  Edwards's  development  was 
independent ;  they  agree  rather  by  logical 
coincidence  than  by  literary  or  speculative  imi- 
tation. And  this  is  the  more  significant  as  the 
agreements  are  mainly  on  points  which  Berke- 
ley later  developed,  and  where  he  agreed  with 
Malebranche.  Edwards,  indeed,  largely  worked 
out  his  problems,  not  only  in  independence,  but 
in  an  intellectual  isolation  which  no  man  in  the 


152         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Old  World  could  know  ;  least  of  all  was  it 
known  to  the  men  with  whom  he  has  most 
affinity  —  Spinoza,  Malebranche,  and  Berkeley. 
The  shape  which  both  the  problems  and  their 
solution  assumed  at  his  subtle  hands  proceeded 
as  much  from  his  simple  and  pure  nature  as 
from  the  simplicity  of  the  life  he  lived.  The 
faith  of  his  people  possessed  him.  Time  was 
to  him  eternal ;  every  year,  every  day,  and 
every  hour  were  the  dwelling-place  of  God. 
The  God  he  believed  in  moved  all  things,  filled 
all  time  and  every  place.  Yet  his  individual 
existence  was  not  a  mere  moment  in  the  being 
of  the  Eternal,  but  a  means  by  which  God  real- 
ized his  purposes  in  time  and  fulfilled  his  ends 
for  eternity.  We  have  to  remember,  then,  at 
the  outset,  these  two  things  :  (1)  the  simplic- 
ity and  purity,  yet  intense  rationality,  of  Ed- 
wards's nature  ;  and  (2)  the  traditional  faith, 
which  made  all  nature  supernatural,  that  pos- 
sessed and  inspired  him.  From  this  point  of 
view  the  things  that  are  most  significant  of 
Edwards  are  not  his  deliberate  and  elaborate, 
but  his  most  spontaneous,  thoughts  —  those 
that  came  to  him,  as  it  were,  by  the  way  of 
intuition  or  meditation  rather  than  by  the 
method  of  logic  and  evidence.     As  indicating 


Jonathan  Edwards  153 

the  quality  of  liis  nature,  which  is  in  a  measure 
the  hidden  laAv  of  his  mind,  we  may  cite  two 
things  : 

(1)  Some  of  the  resolutions  he  wrote  before 
his  nineteenth  year  : 

"  Resolved,  Never  to  do  any  manner  of  thing, 
whether  in  soul  or  body,  less  or  more,  but  what 
tends  to  the  glory  of  God,  nor  be  nor  suffer  it, 
if  I  can  possibly  avoid  it. 

"  Resolved,  to  live  with  all  my  might,  while 
I  do  live. 

''  Resolved,  Never  to  do  anything  which  I 
should  be  afraid  to  do  if  it  were  the  last  hour 
of  my  life. 

"  Resolved,  Never  to  count  that  a  prayer  nor 
to  let  that  pass  as  a  prayer,  nor  that  as  a  peti- 
tion of  a  prayer,  which  is  so  made  that  I  can- 
not hope  that  God  will  answer  it." 

The  fine  love  of  reality  in  the  last  resolution 
is  specially  noteworthy. 

(2)  This  extract  from  his  diary  will  show 
his  innate  mysticism,  the  degree  in  which  he 
was  possessed  of  the  passion  for  the  divine  : 
"  Once,  as  I  rode  out  into  the  woods  for  my 
health,  in  1737,  having  alighted  from  my  horse 
in  a  retired  place,  as  my  manner  commonly  has 
been,  to  walk    for    divine   contemplation   and 


154         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

prayer,  I  had  a  view,  that  for  me  was  extraor- 
dinary, of  the  glory  of  the  Son  of  God,  as 
Mediator  between  God  and  man,  and  his  won- 
derful, great,  full,  pure,  and  sweet  grace  and 
love,  and  meek  and  gentle  condescension.  This 
grace  that  appeared  so  calm  and  sweet  appeared 
also  great  above  the  heavens.  The  Person  of 
Christ  appeared  ineffably  excellent,  with  an 
excellency  great  enough  to  swallow  up  all 
thought  and  conception  —  which  continued,  as 
near  as  I  can  judge,  about  an  hour;  which 
kept  me  the  greater  part  of  the  time  in  a  flood 
of  tears,  and  weeping  aloud.  I  felt  an  ardency 
of  soul  to  be,  what  I  know  not  otherwise  how 
to  express,  emptied  and  annihilated ;  to  lie  in 
the  dust,  and  to  be  full  of  Christ  alone  ;  to 
love  him  with  a  holy  and  pure  love  ;  to  trust 
in  him  ;  to  live  upon  him  ;  to  serve  and  follow 
him  ;  and  to  be  perfectly  sanctified  and  made 
pure,  with  a  divine  and  heavenly  purity.  I 
have  several  other  times  had  views  very  much 
of  the  same  nature,  and  which  have  had  the 
same  effects." 

Let  us  now  see  how  a  man  with  so  intense  and 
spiritual  a  nature  as  Edwards',  and  yet  so  specu- 
lative and  rational  a  mind,  possessed  also  of  a 
faith  so  intense  and  elevated,  and  so  completely 


Jonathan  Edwards  156 

isolated  from  the  great  intellectual  currents  of 
the  time  —  wrestled  in  thought  with  its  largest 
problems.  We  begin  with  some  of  the  positions 
that  he  lays  down  while  quite  a  young  student 
as  the  result  of  his  study  of  Locke.  Locke's 
analysis  of  the  process  of  knowledge  led  him  to 
this  —  that  the  ultimate  source  of  ideas  was 
sensation ;  that  sensation  was  due  to  the  opera- 
tion of  external  bodies,  and  the  quality  which 
remained  to  the  external  body  in  the  ultimate 
analysis  was  Resistance,  which  is  only  another 
form  of  Descartes's  Extension.  But  Edwards 
translates  Locke's  resistance  into  a  mode  of 
divine  energy  or  will,  thus  :  "  There  is  nothing 
out  of  the  mind  but  Resistance,  and  as  Resist- 
ance is  nothing  else  than  the  actual  exertion  of 
God's  power,  so  the  power  can  be  nothing  else 
than  the  constant  Law  or  Method  of  that  actual 
exertion."  Matter  and  energy  are  thus  trans- 
formed into  the  being  and  will  of  God  ;  and  so 
he  again  says  :  "  Nor  will  it  be  found  that  the 
principles  we  lay  down  at  all  make  void  natural 
philosophy,  or  the  science  of  the  Causes  or 
Reasons  of  corporeal  changes  ;  for  to  find  out 
the  reasons  of  things,  in  natural  philosophy,  is 
only  to  find  out  the  proportion  of  God's  acting." 
He  further  thinks  that  all  the  natural  changes 


156         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

in  the  universe  which  follow  in  a  continued 
series  "  do  not  perhaps  exist  anywhere  perfectly 
but  in  the  Divine  Mind."  "But,  then,  if  it  be 
inquired,  what  exists  in  the  Divine  Mind ;  and 
how  these  things  exist  there  ?  I  answer,  There 
is  his  determination,  his  care,  and  his  design, 
that  ideas  shall  be  united  for  ever,  just  so,  and 
in  such  a  manner,  as  is  agreeable  to  such  a 
series.  For  instance,  all  the  ideas  that  ever 
were,  or  ever  shall  be  to  all  eternity,  in  any 
created  mind,  are  answerable  to  the  existence 
of  such  a  peculiar  Atom  in  the  beginning  of 
the  Creation,  of  such  a  determinate  figure  and 
size,  and  to  have  such  a  motion  given  to  it : 
That  is,  they  are  all  such  as  Infinite  Wisdom 
sees  would  follow  according  to  the  series  of 
nature,  from  such  an  Atom,  so  moved." 

We  feel  as  if  we  were  reading  the  first  and 
second  books  of  Spinoza's  "  Ethics  "  through  the 
psychology  of  Locke  as  modified  by  Berkeley. 
Edwards  we  may  here  term  a  monotheistic 
idealist,  with  the  emphasis  on  the  mono.  The 
order  of  things  we  term  nature  is  the  order  of 
ideas  in  the  mind  of  God,  and  this  becomes  our 
order  of  ideas  by  the  direct  operation  of  the 
creative  mind.  And  so  it  follows  that  mind  is 
primary  ;    indeed,  in  a  sense  there  is  nothing 


Jonathan  Edwards  167 

but  mind  and  its  ideas,  those  of  man  being 
effects  from  those  of  God.  In  words  that  sug- 
gest Kant  he  says  :  ''''Place  itself  is  mental,  and 
Withi7i  and  Without  are  mere  mental  concep- 
tions. .  .  .  When  I  say  the  Material  Universe 
exists  only  in  the  mind,  I  mean  that  it  is  abso- 
lutely dependent  on  the  conception  of  the  mind 
for  its  existence,  and  does  not  exist  as  Spirits 
do,  whose  existence  does  not  consist  in,  nor  in 
dependence  on,  the  conception  of  other  minds. 
.  .  .  Things,  as  to  God,  exist  from  all  Eternity, 
alike  ;  that  is,  the  idea  is  always  the  same,  and 
after  the  same  mode.  The  existence  of  things, 
therefore,  that  are  not  actually  in  created 
minds,  consist  only  in  Power,  or  in  the  Deter- 
mination of  God,  that  such  and  such  ideas  shall 
be  raised  in  creative  minds,  upon  such  condi- 
tions." He  sums  up  his  philosophical  position 
in  these  remarkable  words  (the  italics  are  his 
own)  :  "  That  which  truly  is  the  Substance  of 
all  Bodies,  is  the  infinitely  exacts  and  precise^ 
and  perfectly  stable  Idea,  in  Grod's  mind,  together 
with  his  stable  Will,  that  the  same  shall  gradually 
be  communicated  to  us,  and  to  other  minds,  ac- 
cording to  certain  fixed  and  exact  established 
Methods  and  Laws;  or,  in  somewhat  different 
language,  the  infinitely  exact  and  precise  Divine 


168         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Idea^  together  with  an  answerable^  perfectly  ex- 
act^ precise^  and  stable  Will-,  with  respect  to  cor- 
respondent communications  to  Created  Minds, 
and  effects  on  their  minds. ^^  ^  Nature  thus  be- 
comes the  continuous  creation  of  God  ;  all  our 
knowlege  is  the  result  of  his  action,  and  in  the 
interpretation  of  what  is  without  we  are  only 
really  discovering  the  secret  of  what  is  within 
by  thinking  the  thoughts  of  God  after  him. 

Let  us  see  now  how  he  works  this  funda- 
mental idea  out  into  a  theology.  And  first  as 
to  his  conception  of  Deity,  which  also  involves 
that  of  the  relation  which  He  sustains  to  the 
universe.  Edwards,  then,  formulates  the  prin- 
ciple that  "  God  and  real  existence  are  the 
same  ;  God  is,  and  there  is  none  else."  This 
is  logically  involved  in  his  theory  both  of  being 
and  of  knowing.  For  as  real  existence  is  ideal, 
the  divine  as  the  f ontal  or  creative  mind  is  the 
source  of  all  ideas,  and  is  therefore  the  reality 

1  Compare  with  the  quotations  in  the  text  the  following 
propositions  from  Spinoza's  "Ethics  "  :  "  Prseter  deum  nulla 
dari  neque  concipi  potest  substantia,"  "  quicquid  est  in  Deo 
est,  et  nihil  sine  Deo  esse  neque  concipi  potest."  "Deus  non 
tantum  est  causa  efficiens  rerum  existentia,  sed  etiam 
essentise."  "Voluntas  non  potest  vocari  causa  libera,  sed 
tantum  necessaria."  "Ordo  et  connexio  idearum  idem  est, 
ac  ordo  et  connexio  rerum." 


Jonathan  Edwards  159 

of  all  existence.  And  so  he  later  expresses  Ids 
notion  thus  :  "  The  eternal  and  infinite  Being 
is,  in  effect,  being  in  general,  and  comprehends 
universal  existence."  And,  again,  he  says  : 
God  is  "  the  foundation  and  fountain  of  all 
being  and  all  perfection,  from  whom  all  is  per- 
fectly derived,  and  on  whom  all  is  most  abso- 
lutely and  perfectly  dependent ;  whose  being 
and  beauty  is,  as  it  were,  the  sum  and  com- 
prehension of  all  existence  and  excellence  much 
more  than  the  sun  is  the  fountain  and  summary 
comprehension  of  all  the  light  and  brightness 
of  the  day."  But  as  God  is,  such  must  the 
creation  be,  for  as  is  the  fountain  such  is  the 
stream,  as  is  the  beginning  such  is  the  end. 
And  so  he  describes  the  end  of  the  creation  as 
really  contained  within  the  divine  nature.  "  It 
appears  reasonable  to  suppose,"  he  says,  "that 
it  was  God's  last  end  that  there  might  be  a 
glorious  and  abundant  emanation  of  his  infinite 
fulness  of  good  ad  extra^  or  without  himself ;  and 
that  the  disposition  to  communicate  himself,  or 
diffuse  his  own  Fulness^  was  Avhat  moved  him 
to  create  the  world."  As  the  end  for  which 
the  world  was  created  is  thus  contained  in 
God,  and  as  creation  is  "  an  emanation  of  his 
own  infinite  fulness,"  it  follows  that  as  He  is, 


160        Prophets  of  the   Christian  Faith 

its  end  must  be  ;  and  this  end  he  describes  in 
twofold  terms  —  as  his  own  glory  or  as  the 
creature's  good,  but  these  as  coincident  and 
identical,  not  as  different,  still  less  as  opposed. 
Thus  he  says  :  "  God's  respect  to  the  creature's 
good  and  his  respect  to  himself  is  not  a  divided 
respect ;  but  both  are  united  in  one,  as  the 
happiness  of  the  creature  aimed  at  is  happiness 
in  union  with  himself."  And  again  :  "  Thus  it 
is  easy  to  conceive  how  God  should  seek  the 
good  of  the  creature,  consisting  in  the  creat- 
ure's knowledge  of  holiness,  and  even  his  happi- 
ness, from  a  supreme  regard  to  himself;  as  his 
happiness  arises  from  that  which  is  an  image 
and  participation  of  God's  own  beauty  ;  and 
consists  in  the  creature's  exercising  a  supreme 
regard  to  God,  and  complacence  in  him." 

So  far  we  have  been  concerned  with  his  con- 
ception of  God,  and  God's  relation  to  the  course 
and  end  of  being  ;  we  have  now  to  see  how  he 
translated  his  theology  into  religion.  Religion 
was  to  him  essentially  imitation  of  God,  the 
godly  being  the  godlike  man.  As,  then,  God 
was,  such  ought  the  virtuous  man  to  be.  The 
methods  and  ends  of  the  good  were  those  of 
God.  As  to  God,  "he  delights  in  his  own 
goodness,  and  in  the  exercise  of  his  goodness, 


Jonathan  Edwards  161 

and  therefore  he  delights  to  make  the  creatui-e 
happy,  and  delights  to  see  him  made  happy." 
He  says  :  "  In  God,  the  love  of  himself  and  the 
love  of  the  public  are  not  to  be  distinguished 
as  in  man,  because  God's  being,  as  it  were, 
comprehends  all."  He  means,  then,  that  as 
man's  obedience  expresses  God's  perfection,  the 
divine  glory  is  manifested  in  the  character  and 
the  conduct  of  the  saints  ;  for  "they  are  all 
but  the  emanations  of  God's  glory,  or  the  ex- 
cellent brightness  and  fulness  of  the  Divinity 
diffused,  overflowing,  and,  as  it  were,  enlarged ; 
or,  in  one  word,  existing  ad  extra.''  Since 
religion  is  imitation  of  such  a  Deity,  he  con- 
ceives virtue  "  as  love  to  the  greatest  happiness, 
or  love  to  the  happiness  of  universal  being''; 
I.e.,  the  virtuous  man  is  the  man  whose  conduct 
is  governed  by  the  very  end  for  which  God 
made  the  world.  For  it  is  not  merely  personal 
happiness  or  love  to  our  own  personal  pleasure 
which  constitutes  an  action  virtuous  ;  on  the 
contrary,  he  thus  admirably  distinguishes  : 
"  That  which  is  often  called  Self-love  is  exceed- 
ingly improperly  called  Love.,  for  they  do  not 
only  say  that  one  loves  himself,  when  he  sees 
something  amiable  in  himself,  the  view  of 
which  begets  delight.     But  merely  an  inclina- 


162         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

tion  to  pleasure,  and  averseness  to  pain,  they 
call  Self-love  ;  so  that  the  devils  and  other 
damned  spirits  love  themselves,  not  because 
they  see  anything  in  themselves  which  they 
imagine  to  be  lovely,  but  merely  because  they 
do  not  incline  to  pain,  but  to  pleasure."  True 
virtue,  therefore,  "  consists  in  love  for  God,  the 
being  of  beings  infinitely  the  greatest  and 
best."  It  is  not  the  love  of  pleasure  but  the 
happiness  that  is  holiness  —  a  certain  kind  of 
beautiful  nature  which  appears  in  itself  beauti- 
ful or  comely  because  it  so  makes  comeliness  — 
is  godlike  because  it  tends  to  make  the  world 
like  God. 

While  these  are  Edwards's  fundamental  and 
characteristic  ideas,  the  heart  as  it  were  of  his 
philosophy,  they  are  modified  in  the  working 
out  by  the  formal  logic  and  the  imperfect  psy- 
chology which  he  owed  to  Locke.  When  he 
turned  from  speculation  to  experience,  he  looked 
at  it  through  the  traditional  beliefs  of  his  peo- 
ple. These  were,  of  course,  imbedded  in  the 
very  speech  of  his  community,  the  local  condi- 
tions from  which  he  could  not  extricate  himself, 
as  it  were  the  vernacular  into  which  he  had 
been  born.  From  this  point  of  view  we  may 
regard  the  "Treatise  on  the  Will"  as  not  so 


Jonathan  Edivards  163 

much  a  creation  of  his  philosophy  as  a  theologi- 
cal inheritance  ;  but  its  justification  was  alto- 
gether in  his  own  manner.  It  is  remarkable 
that  while  in  his  ultimate  thinking  he  had  so 
completely  emancipated  himself  from  empiri- 
cism, in  this  field  of  thought  he  identified 
himself  with  the  school  to  which  he  was  most 
radically  opposed.  For  just  as  Collins  had  so 
developed  Locke  as  to  deny  liberty  and  affirm 
necessity,  and  as  Hume  had  resolved  causation 
into  mere  antecedence  and  sequence,  and  as 
Henry  Home  had  applied  the  same  principles 
to  the  naturalistic  explanation  of  morality  and 
religion,  so  Edwards,  in  his  ''  Treatise  on  the 
Will,"  turned  his  back  upon  his  own  philosophy 
and  advocated  one  alien  not  only  to  Christian- 
ity but  even  to  theism.  This  may  require  a 
word  of  explanation.  His  fundamental  notion 
that  God  is  the  only  real  cause  may  be  made 
the  basis  of  a  theory  of  necessity,  but  then  the 
necessity  that  it  expresses  will  be  one  of  uni- 
versal benevolence.  It  may  be  quite  victori- 
ously argued  that  where  God  is  the  essence 
and  energy  of  all  that  is,  man  cannot  be  free  ; 
but  if  God  be  conceived  as  so  good  as  to  will 
universal  happiness,  the  ultimate  end  must  be 
even  as  his  will.     It  is   remarkable   that  the 


164         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

thinker  who  had,  on  the  most  transcendental 
of  all  subjects,  so  broken  with  empiricism, 
should,  at  this  point  of  transcendent  practical 
importance,  have  fallen  such  a  potent  and  will- 
ing victim  to  its  exhausted  charms.  But  we 
can  see  how  it  happened.  The  psychological 
basis  of  the  Treatise  Locke  supplied.  The 
will  was  identified  with  desire,  choice  with 
inclination.  As  desire  always  must  be  for  the 
agreeable  and  towards  the  pleasant,  so  the  will 
is  always  as  the  strongest  motive  is.  Choice, 
in  other  words,  was  superseded  by  inclination, 
and  where  inclination  or  desire  is  the  only  form 
of  choice  the  man  is  but  the  victim  of  circum- 
stances, made  according  to  what  happens  to  him 
rather  than  according  to  what  he  is.  The 
"  Treatise  on  the  Will "  was  Edwards's  most 
elaborate  work;  it  was  also  his  most  imme- 
diately influential.  It  was  received  in  Scot- 
land, to  the  dismay  of  his  evangelical  friends, 
with  warm  approval  by  their  freethinking  con- 
temporaries. Henry  Home  and  David  Hume 
found  their  own  ideas  here  expanded  and  en- 
forced by  the  champion  of  the  orthodox,  and 
the  latter,  in  dismay,  turned  to  him  for  ex- 
planations of  difficulties,  which  indeed  he 
attempted  to  give  even  while  he  failed  to  per- 


Jonathan  Edwards  165 

ceive  their  real  source  and  significance.  We 
may  leave  the  Treatise  to  its  empirical  admir- 
ers, while  holding  to  the  theology  which  is  its 
corrective  and  negation. 

Edwards  was  in  many  ways  a  man  who  ex- 
emplified the  most  characteristic  qualities  of 
New  England.  Occasionally,  through  his  all 
too  sombre  speech,  a  kindly  gleam  of  humour 
breaks.  Thus  he  quaintly  says,  "Although 
the  devil  be  exceedingly  crafty  and  subtle,  yet 
he  is  one  of  the  greatest  fools  and  blockheads 
in  the  world,  as  the  subtlest  of  wicked  men  are. 
Sin  is  of  such  a  nature  that  it  strangely  infatu- 
ates and  stultifies  the  mind."  Take  him  all  in 
all,  in  the  beauty  of  his  character,  in  the  eleva- 
tion of  his  thought,  his  claim  to  stand  amid  the 
great  thinkers  of  the  world  is  indisputable.  In 
England  here  we  have  just  been  making  wel- 
come the  new  edition  of  Bishop  Butler's  works 
—  edited  by  the  statesman  who  in  his  retire- 
ment shows  his  undiminished  vigour  and  reveals 
his  lifelong  interest  in  theology  —  and  I  have 
been  comparing  Butler's  answer  to  Tindal  with 
Edwards's,  with  the  result  that  I  am  forced  to 
confess  that  while  the  rigour  and  vigour  of  inex- 
orable logic  and  the  strength  which  comes  from 
a  concentration  due  to  the  careful  exclusion  of 


166         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

all  irrelevant  matter  are  with  Butler,  the  eleva- 
tion, the  insight,  the  oversight,  the  feeling  of 
the  magnitude  of  the  problem,  and  the  forecast 
of  the  lines  along  which  the  ultimate  answer 
must  move  are  all  with  Edwards.  Still,  he 
speaks  to  us  in  a  strange  tongue.  It  is,  indeed, 
our  mother  speech,  yet,  as  it  were,  in  a  dialect 
so  remote  from  the  culture  of  Europe,  from  the 
elegance  of  literature,  and  the  discipline  of  the 
classics,  that  we  hardly  know  it  as  our  own ; 
but  when  we  have  penetrated  under  the  speech 
to  the  matter,  and  behind  the  form  to  the  man, 
we  are  fain  to  confess  that  in  this  lone  New 
Englander,  preaching  now  in  Northampton, 
whether  amid  the  excitement  of  the  Great 
Revival  or  in  the  face  of  the  coldness  of  an 
estranged  people,  and  now  labouring  in  the 
backwoods  at  Stockbridge,  amid  Indians  and 
amid  countrymen  ruder  than  the  Indians,  we 
yet  have  one  who  holds  his  place  amid  the 
most  honourable  of  the  doctors  of  the  Church, 
of  the  philosophers  of  his  century,  and  of  the 
saints  of  God. 


X 

HORACE  BUSHNELL 


X 

HORACE    BUSHNELL 

BY    THE    REV.    T.    T.    MONGER,  D.D. 

Horace  Bushnell  appeared  at  a  time  when 
a  theologian  was  greatly  needed  in  New  Eng- 
land. The  force  of  Edwards's  influence  had 
spent  itself,  or,  rather,  its  soul  had  gone  to 
feed  an  intellectual  idealism,  and  its  body  had 
degenerated  into  a  hard  formalism.  His  over- 
whelming sense  and  assertion  of  God  —  a  thing 
not  easily  brought  within  the  limits  of  theology 
or  philosophy  as  they  are  usually  regarded  — 
had  lost  its  inspiring  power. 

When  Dr.  Bushnell  began  his  ministry  in 
Hartford  in  1833,  the  churches  may  be  said  to 
have  been  living  under  a  system  rather  than 
under  truths.  I  will  not  use  my  limited  space 
to  enforce  the  distinction,  though  it  is  one  of 
real  importance.  The  good  qualities  that  we 
ascribe  to  the  churches  of  that  day  grew  out 
of  the  truths  involved  in  their  theological  sys- 
169 


170         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

tern  ;  their  faults  sprang  out  of  their  insistence 
that  those  truths  must  be  so  defined  and  shaped 
as  to  form  a  coherent  system.  It  was  a  marvel 
of  exactness  —  definitions  and  proof -texts  be- 
ing accepted  —  but  it  never  satisfied  the  think- 
ers, and  was  constantly  being  "improved."  In 
its  last  form  it  reposes  in  unpublished  manu- 
scripts or  unread  volumes.  But,  though  under- 
going constant  modification,  it  was  imposed  on 
the  churches  with  relentless  rigour  as  the  sub- 
stance of  their  faith.  Its  conceptions  of  God 
and  man  were  alike  defective,  its  exegesis  was 
poor  and  arbitrary,  its  logic  formal  and  pedan- 
tic, and  its  conclusions  were  often  inhuman. 
While  involving  great  nourishing  truths,  it 
so  combined  them  that  they  almost  ceased  to 
wear  the  Christian  cast.  It  is  too  well  known 
to  require  statement  —  a  fall  in  Adam,  who  in 
some  sense  contained  or  represented  the  race  ; 
a  consequent  universal  condemnation  to  eternal 
punishment ;  an  atonement  that  either  endured 
the  punishment  or  made  some  corresponding 
expression  of  it ;  imputed  sin  and  imputed 
righteousness;  electing  grace  and  reprobation, 
each  irrespective  of  character  except  as  it  may 
have  been  anticipated  in  the  counsels  of  eter- 
nity.    Such,  in  substance,  was  the  theology  that 


Horace  Bushnell  171 

prevailed  in  the  early  part  of  the  century.  As 
we  now  see  things,  it  interpreted  hardly  a  fact 
pertaining  to  God  or  man  or  Scripture  or  nat- 
ure with  correctness,  and  yet  it  asserted  dog- 
mas that  presumed  an  exhaustive  knowledge 
of  them.  Great  Biblical  words  like  faith  and 
sacrifice  and  life  were  emptied  of  their  real 
meaning  and  made  to  carry  a  sense  not  in- 
tended. Texts  were  taken  out  of  their  setting 
and  used  in  support  of  doctrines  to  which  they 
do  not  refer ;  and  thus  the  whole  Bible  was  sub- 
ordinated to  a  system  which  only  by  a  fiction 
could  be  said  to  have  its  origin  in  it.  It  was 
mainly  designed  to  set  forth  the  sovereignty 
and  the  glory  of  God  —  in  redemption  indeed, 
but  the  two  terms  were  put  in  such  a  relation 
that  redemption  was  belittled  by  sovereignty 
and  actually  failed  in  reflecting  glory  —  a  mis- 
take in  the  construction  of  the  system  that  has 
reacted  fatally  upon  it.  The  mistake  was  a 
natural  one ;  the  idea  of  humanity  and  of  the 
scope  of  redemption  had  not  yet  fully  come. 
Our  reverence  for  the  fathers  leads  us  to 
speak  of  the  vanishing  away  of  this  system  as 
a  change  in  habit  of  thought,  but  it  is  more 
than  that ;  it  is  disappearing  because  it  is  no 
longer  regarded  as  true. 


172         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Important  but  not  fundamental  changes  in  it 
were  going  on  while  Bashnell  was  a  student  in 
Yale  College.  The  New  Haven  divines  were 
urging  a  view  of  the  freedom  of  the  will  and 
of  the  moral  government  of  God  which  de- 
veloped a  deeper  sense  of  human  responsibility 
and  induced  a  revival  of  Christian  activity  the 
effects  of  which  were  felt  in  the  birth  of  great 
religious  enterprises  that  are  still  full  of  power 
—  an  indication  of  emergence  from  the  prevail- 
ing theology.  But  it  was  a  period  of  fierce 
controversy.  Dr.  Taylor  and  Dr.  Tyler  were 
dividing  the  churches  over  a  metaphysical  no 
tion  of  the  will,  the  difference  between  them 
being  that  one  claimed  that  it  was  a  little  freer 
than  the  other ;  and  the  degree  of  difference 
was  thought  to  involve  results  derogatory  to 
God  and  harmful  to  souls  The  condition,  in- 
tellectually and  morally,  was  cluttered  with 
metaphysical  distinctions,  emanating  from  the 
studies  of  men  imperfectly  educated,  but  keen 
enough  to  see  the  lack  of  adjustment  in  a  sys- 
tem which  showed  such  lack  because  it  was 
made  up  of  truths  which  could  not  be  dove- 
tailed into  each  other.  The  pulpit  was  nar- 
row and  timid  for  fear  of  getting  beyond  the 
imposed  conditions,  or  it  was  tyrannical  in  its 


Horace  Bushnell  173 

insistence  on  them.  The  distinctions  and  dif- 
ferences had  been  growing  since  Edwards,  and 
had  reached  a  stage  which  Bushnell  described 
in  his  preface  to  "Christ  in  Theology"  as 
*'the  sedimentary  subsidence  of  theology  itself, 
precipitated  in  the  confused  mixture  of  its 
elements."  Meanwhile  in  Massachusetts  the 
Unitarian  schism  had  paralyzed  Orthodoxy 
with  fear,  and  no  one  dared  to  speak  above 
one's  breath.  Professor  Park  had  not  yet 
come  to  Andover  with  his  great  word  —  one 
of  the  most  effective  ever  spoken  in  the  Ameri- 
can pulpit — on  "The  Theology  of  the  Intellect 
and  the  Feelings"  —  effective  because  it  showed 
a  way  out  of  an  over-rigid  theology ;  a  kind 
Providence  provides  such  vents  for  intolerable 
beliefs. 

What  made  this  condition  so  deplorable,  and 
so  exasperating  to  Dr.  Bushnell  when  he  be- 
came a  pastor,  was  that  this  system  was  carried 
into  and  imposed  on  religious  experience.  The 
Thirty-nine  Articles  are  Calvinistic,  but  they 
are  not  intruded  on  the  life  of  the  Episcopal 
laity:  wise  but  illogical.  The  clergy  of  New 
England  could  not  endure  such  inconsistency. 
Indeed,  they  had  nothing  to  fall  back  on  if 
their   dogmas   were    set    aside ;    they   had    no 


174         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

function  but  to  turn  them  into  experience ; 
the  cardinal  duty  of  the  pulpit  was  to  preach 
them.  And  well  was  it  carried  out  —  an  hon- 
est but  doubtful  business.  Religious  experi- 
ence was  made  to  tally  with  the  system  and 
run  the  round  of  its  several  members  in  a 
fixed  order.  Human  life  in  all  its  complexity 
and  variety  was  forced  to  act  under  a  sharply 
defined  conception  of  lost  condition  by  nature, 
heavy  conviction  of  sin,  struggle,  surrender, 
illumination  by  the  Spirit,  to  be  followed  by 
an  experience  of  constant  heart-searching  with 
possible  doubts  of  election  and  never  any  cer- 
tainty of  it,  fear  lest  the  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost  had  been  committed,  alternations  of 
peace  and  assurance  with  occasional  ecstasies 
of  trust  and  hope ;  but  as  a  whole  the  experi- 
ence was  overshadowed  by  morbid  misgiving 
and  painful  foreboding  —  a  Puritan  search  for 
the  Holy  Grail. 

The  experience  was  adjusted  to  a  system 
every  feature  of  which  must  be  reproduced  by 
every  person  ;  but  while  all  were  thus  held 
to  the  system  with  but  small  room  for  the 
play  of  personal  qualities,  the  experience  was 
absolutely  individual :  each  soul  was  isolated 
from  every  other,  and  almost  from  God,  and 


Horace  Bushnell  175 

left  to  wrestle  alone  for  salvation.  This  em- 
phasis upon  system  lay  at  the  root  of  the  New 
England  zeal  for  orthodoxy,  and  of  its  intoler- 
ance of  the  slightest  departure  from  it.  If  one 
doubted  any  part,  one  doubted  the  whole.  If 
he  doubted  the  eternity  of  punishment,  he  en- 
dangered the  moral  government  of  God  ;  if  he 
doubted  decrees,  all  theology  was  involved  in 
confusion  :  both  doubts  were  an  impeachment 
of  the  sovereignty  of  God. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  things  when  Dr. 
Bushnell  came  upon  the  stage.  Its  main  feat- 
ure was  its  unnaturalness.  Each  member  of  the 
system  represented  or  hinted  at  a  truth,  but  the 
truths  were  so  defined  and  manipulated  that 
their  real  meaning  evaporated  and  left  only  a 
travesty  of  the  Gospel.  The  system  bore  little 
relation  to  human  nature,  took  no  account  of 
its  variety  or  need,  or  method  of  action,  but 
loaded  it  with  burdens  which  did  not  beloncr 
to  it,  and  then  required  it  to  throw  them  off 
by  processes  that  were  arbitrary  and  unnatural. 

Dr.  Bushnell  was  reared  and  educated  under 
this  system,  though  some  exceptional  influences 
in  childhood  separated  him  somewhat  from  its 
more  rigid  features.  He  never  broke  away 
from  it  externally,  but  from  the  first  he  pro- 


176        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

tested  against  it.  He  refused  to  think  under 
it  or  along  its  lines,  and  the  point  of  his  stout- 
est protest  was  its  unnaturalness.  He  took 
the  path  by  which  superior  minds  have  always 
found  their  way  into  new  realms  of  truth. 
They  do  not  pass  from  one  school  to  another, 
but  instead  rise  into  some  new  or  some  larger 
conception  of  nature  and  start  afresh.  All 
gains  in  philosophy  and  religion  and  civiliza- 
tion have  been  made  by  farther  inroads  into 
nature,  and  never  in  any  other  way.  Dr. 
Bushnell,  with  the  unerring  instinct  of  a  dis- 
coverer, struck  this  path  and  kept  it  to  the  end. 
At  the  bottom  of  all  his  work  lies  a  profound 
sense  of  nature,  of  its  meaning  and  force  in  the 
realm  of  the  spirit.  He  did  not  deny  a  certain 
antithesis  between  nature  and  the  supernatural, 
but  he  so  defined  the  latter  that  the  two  could 
be  embraced  in  the  one  category  of  nature  when 
viewed  as  the  ascertained  order  of  God  in  crea- 
tion. The  supernatural  is  simply  the  realm  of 
freedom,  and  it  is  as  natural  as  the  physical 
realm  of  necessity.  Thus  he  not  only  got  rid 
of  the  traditional  antinomy  between  them,  but 
led  the  way  into  that  conception  of  the  relation 
of  God  to  his  world  which  more  and  more  is 
taking  possession  of  modern  thought.     In  his 


Horace  Bushiell  177 

essay  on  Language  he  says  (and  the  thought  is 
always  with  him  as  a  governing  principle)  : 
"The  whole  universe  of  nature  is  a  perfect 
analogon  of  the  whole  universe  of  thought  or 
spirit.  Therefore,  as  nature  becomes  truly  a 
universe  only  through  science  revealing  its 
universal  laws,  the  true  universe  of  thought 
and  spirit  cannot  sooner  be  conceived."  Thus 
he  actually  makes  the  revelation  of  spiritual 
truth  wait  on  the  unfolding  of  the  facts  and 
laws  of  the  world  of  nature.  There  is  some- 
thing pathetic  in  the  attitude  of  this  great 
thinker  sitting  in  the  dark,  waiting  for  dis- 
closures in  nature  that  would  substantiate 
what  he  felt  was  true  in  the  realm  of  the 
spirit.  A  generation  later  he  would  have 
seen  the  light  for  which  he  longed  —  a  light 
that  justifies  the  central  point  of  all  his  main 
contentions. 

He  seems  to  have  taken  to  heart  the  fact 
that  God  made  the  heavens  and  earth  and  all 
that  in  them  is.  This  sense  of  nature  was 
largely  an  endowment.  No  theologian  was 
ever  more  fully  dowered  with  the  seeing  eye 
and  the  interpreting  mind.  He  was  a  poet 
before  he  was  a  theologian,  and  his  chief 
excellence  as  the  latter  is  due  to  his  greatness 


178        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

as  the  former.  This  divine  gift  was  stimu- 
lated and  directed  by  Coleridge,  whose  "Aids 
to  Reflection"  kindled  within  him  a  passion 
for  thought  and  feeling  early  in  his  career. 
Thus,  without  being  fully  aware  of  it,  he  was 
in  close  accord  with  that  modern  habit  of 
theological  thought  which  came  in  through 
Coleridge  and  has  since  pervaded  the  theo- 
logical world.  Its  key  is  nature  ;  its  secret 
is  reason.  It  sees  first  and  speculates  after- 
ward. Dr.  Bushnell's  entire  work  may  be 
characterized  as  a  plea  for  naturalness.  His 
eye  is  always  fixed  on  the  nature  of  things. 
His  first  book  —  "  Christian  Nurture  "  —  is  a 
plea  for  Christian  education  according  to 
nature,  as  seen  in  the  divine  constitution  of 
the  family.  "  God  in  Christ "  and  "  Christ  in 
Theology  "  are  attempts  to  bring  the  Trinity 
within  conceptions  that  do  not  violate  nature. 
His  Sabellianism  grew  out  of  his  desire  to 
bring  the  Trinity  under  the  great  principle 
of  the  Logos,  and  so  get  God  out  of  his 
incomprehensibility  down  into  a  region  Avhere 
things  are  a  revelation  of  God  ;  the  Logos  is 
the  meeting-ground  of  God  and  nature,  the 
visible  side  of  the  invisible  God.  In  Christ 
God   manifests   himself    as   human,    and   feels 


Horace  Bushnell  179 

and  acts  and  suffers  in  human  ways,  but  it 
is  all  divine  and  yet  natural  as  these  processes 
in  man  are  natural. 

"Nature  and  the  Supernatural"  had  for  its 
purpose  to  include  the  two  contrasted  domains 
within  one  category.  The  will  itself,  he 
claimed,  was  a  supernatural  agent.  "The 
Vicarious  Sacrifice "  was  an  effort  to  state 
the  Atonement  in  terms  that  are  justified  in 
human  experience.  His  essays  are  careful 
explorations  into  the  nature  and  relations  of 
the  thing  under  discussion ;  often  they  ran 
wild  with  imagination,  but  in  the  farthest 
flights  he  never  let  go  of  the  guiding  clue  of 
nature. 

The  times  had  much  to  do  with  the  develop- 
ment and  shaping  of  his  powers.  He  began 
his  ministry  just  as  that  crisis  was  maturing 
which  ended  the  reign  of  superstition  and 
tradition,  and  ushered  in  the  scientific  habit 
of  thought.  It  was  a  time  well  described  in 
Matthew  Arnold's  lines  : 

Wandering  between  two  worlds ; 

One  dead,  the  other  powerless  to  be  born. 

Bushnell  felt  the  deadness  of  one  world,  but 
not    the   inability   of    the   other   to   be   born. 


180         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

Born  he  at  least  would  be,  and  his  whole  life 
was  one  steady  effort  to  find  his  way  into  this 
new  world  where  highest  truths  could  be 
joined  to  highest  reason  by  the  connecting 
bond  of  nature.  Nearly  everything  that  he 
wrote  was  grounded  "  in  principles  interpreted 
by  human  analogies."  The  power  and  great- 
ness of  the  man  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  was 
broad  enough  to  cover  the  world  in  which  he 
first  found  himself,  and  also  that  into  which 
he  made  his  way.  He  did  not  abjure  his  past ; 
he  made  no  violent  break  with  the  existing 
order ;  the  weakness  of  schism  was  not  in 
him  ;  he  might  be  turned  out,  but  he  would 
not  himself  go  out.  His  historic  sense  was 
strong,  as  it  is  with  all  great  men,  and  he 
shrank  from  violating  it  by  external  change. 
The  past  contained  great  realities  of  faith  and 
practice,  and  he  held  fast  to  them.  He  had 
no  liking  for  raw  and  violent  denials  and  fresh- 
made  doctrines.  But  while  he  held  to  the 
past,  he  played  the  part  of  critic  with  vigour, 
cleared  it  of  its  hardness  and  narrowness  and 
superstition,  searched  out  "the  soul  of  good- 
ness "  in  it,  and  so  paved  the  way  into  a  world 
as  new  as  that  of  which  Arnold  sadly  dreamed. 
I  do  not  mean  that  Dr.  Bushnell  wholly  parted 


Horace  Bushnell  181 

with  what  now  seem  to  us  imperfect  and  pro- 
vincial opinions  in  theology,  nor  that  his 
thought  was  always  what  would  now  be  re- 
garded as  scientific  ;  no  man  ever  wholly  frees 
himself  from  the  defects  of  his  age  ;  but  he 
found  his  way  into  the  world  of  the  spirit. 
Instead  of  leaving  one  field  and  going  over 
into  another,  he  rose  into  a  higher  region  that 
spanned  both.  The  characteristic  of  the  man 
was  spirituality ;  his  ruling  passion  was  for 
freedom  and  order.  He  found  his  way  into 
freedom  along  two  paths  —  one  by  which  he 
'^passed  into  the  vein  of  comprehensiveness, 
questioning  whether  all  parties  were  not  in 
reality  standing  for  some  one  side  or  article 
of  the  truth  "  ;  the  other  was  a  theory  of  lan- 
guage which  he  regarded  as  his  own  peculiar 
work.  Whether  it  was  a  true  theory  or  not, 
it  served  his  purpose  ;  if  it  was  a  hobby,  it 
carried  him  whither  he  was  moved  to  go.  His 
biographer  regards  it  as  "the  key  to  Horace 
Bushnell,"  and,  undoubtedly,  he  is  to  be  read 
under  his  own  theory  of  language.  Its  root 
is  to  be  found  in  the  ancient  doctrine  of  the 
Logos.  As  used  by  himself,  words  became 
the  reflection  of  his  thought  rather  than 
"exact    representatives"   of    it.     This    theory 


182         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

seemed  necessary  to  enable  him  to  speak 
according  to  his  thought  on  such  themes  as 
the  Trinity,  atonement,  miracle,  and  regen- 
eration—  subjects  that  chiefly  engaged  his 
attention.  He  found  these  great  doctrines 
tied  up  and  smothered  under  hard  and  narrow 
definitions.  His  first  step  was  rejection  of  the 
definitions  ;  thus  he  escaped  into  the  world  of 
the  spirit,  where  language  does  not  define  but 
only  indicates  or  shadows  forth.  The  chief 
value  of  this  theory  of  language  lies  in  its 
assertion  that  spiritual  facts  and  processes 
cannot  be  brought  within  strict  definition. 
We  are  getting  to  know  this  well  enough 
without  a  special  theory.  Possibly,  however, 
the  day  is  not  yet  past  when  categorical 
answers  to  sharply  defined  questions  concern- 
ing infinite  and  eternal  things  are  required 
of  suspected  teachers.  In  such  a  case  a  theory 
of  language  that  eludes  the  dictum  of  "the 
evident  meaning  of  the  words"  is  not  only 
convenient  but  justifiable,  and  is  a  proper 
defence  when  official  bigotry  worries  such 
teachers.  Even  theology  has  its  humorous 
side,  and  Samson  may  jest  while  the  Philistines 

torture   him.     Dr.    A ,  his   chief    accuser, 

spends   two   days   with   Dr.    Bushnell   and   is 


Horace  Buslinell  183 

led  to  believe  that  there  is  no  heresy  in  him  ; 
he  could  not  understand  his  host's  use  of 
language. 

I  can  but  hint  at  the  works  which  came  from 
his  prolific  pen  —  a  dozen  volumes  at  least, 
five  of  them  solid  treatises  on  theology  and 
the  rest  sermons  or  essays.  There  is  a  logical 
order  in  the  treatises  which  indicates  that  one 
sprang  out  of  or  was  rendered  necessary  by 
another.  He  began  where  theology  has  so 
often  broken  down  and  started  afresh  —  as 
Dr.  Prentice,  of  Union  Seminary,  long  ago 
pointed  out  —  with  children,  in  a  treatise  on 
"Christian  Nurture."  It  won  all  Christian 
motherhood  and  well-nigh  the  fathers,  but  it 
was  discovered  to  be  heretical,  and  charges 
to  that  effect  were  brought,  which  never 
relaxed  but  never  accomplished  anything 
except  to  forward  the  doctrine  it  attacked. 
The  aim  of  the  book  was  to  establish  the 
proposition  :  "  That  the  child  is  to  grow  up 
a  Christian  and  never  know  himself  as  being 
otherwise "  ;  a  very  simple  statement,  but  it 
shook  New  England  theology  to  its  founda- 
tions. It  attacked  the  extreme  individualism 
into  which  theology  had  fallen,  and  recalled 
it   to  those  organic  relations  between  parents 


184         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

and  children  which  are  recognized  in  all  the 
historic  Churches,  and  are  steadily  gaining 
significance  under  modern  thought.  Christian 
experience  had  become  too  supernatural ;  Dr. 
Bushnell  brought  it  within  the  range  of  human 
nature.  The  effect  of  the  treatise  has  been 
to  make  Christian  character  not  less  a  prod- 
uct of  divine  grace,  and  to  reinforce  it  by  the 
natural  relations  of  the  family.  Its  main 
idea  is  as  old  as  the  oldest  religion  ;  for  no 
men  were  ever  so  dull  as  to  conceive  or 
develop  a  religion  on  a  basis  of  pure  individ- 
ualism ;  but  Dr.  Bushnell  treated  the  subject 
in  a  full  and  thorough  way,  and  prepared 
it  for  the  modern  conceptions  and  applications 
of  heredity. 

The  next  book  in  point  of  influence  is  "  The 
Vicarious  Sacrifice."  I  refer  only  to  the  first 
volume,  and  not  to  the  second,  which  was  orig- 
inally published  under  the  title  "Forgiveness 
and  Law,"  and  afterward  incorporated  with  the 
first  as  a  part  of  the  same  treatise.  Its  main 
purpose  is  to  show  that  the  object  and  issue  of 
the  atonement  is  the  moral  recovery  of  man. 
Christ  did  not  die  "  to  even  up  a  score  of  pen- 
alty," but  to  make  the  cross  a  salvation  by  its 
power  on  life  and  character.     The  key  to  his 


Horace  Bushnell  185 

view  is  found  on  the  title-page:  ''The  Vicari- 
ous Sacrifice,  grounded  in  Principles  of  Uni- 
versal Obligation."  He  regards  "the  sacrifice 
and  cross  of  Christ  his  simple  duty,  and  not 
any  superlative,  optional  kind  of  good,  outside 
of  all  the  common  principles  of  virtue.  It  is 
not  goodness  over  good,  and  yielding  a  surplus 
of  merit  in  that  manner  for  us,  but  it  is  only 
just  as  good  as  it  ought  to  be,  or  the  highest 
law  of  right  required  it  to  be."  Here  again  we 
detect  the  note  of  nature  which  is  heard  in  all 
his  writings.  He  will  not  admit  that  there  is 
any  principle  or  law  in  the  atonement  which  is 
not  of  "universal  obligation."  The  sacrifice 
of  Christ  meant  and  called  for  an  exactly  cor- 
responding sacrifice  on  the  part  of  all  men ;  it 
impressed  them  for  that  end,  and  so  saved  them. 
It  is  not  penal,  nor  expiatory  except  as  it  works 
morally  to  overcome  evil,  nor  is  it  an  expedient 
to  uphold  a  moral  government.  These  extra- 
human  renderings  of  a  simple  and  universal 
moral  law  are  set  aside  to  make  room  for  one 
that  the  twentieth  century  will  hardly  call  in 
question.  No  efforts  to  link  this  view  with 
those  found  in  the  old  theologies  —  doubtless 
it  can  be  found  in  them  —  lessen  its  novelty  as 
it  was   propounded   to   the   churches   of  New 


186         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

England.  As  things  were  in  1866  it  was  un- 
doubtedly heretical,  as  many  a  sympathizing 
young  pastor  found  to  his  cost.  The  volume 
strengthened  the  suspicion  awakened  by  "  Chris- 
tian Nurture,"  and  henceforth  the  heresy  con- 
nected with  him  was  that  of  the  "moral  view." 
Efforts  were  made  to  bring  him  to  trial,  but 
the  Congregational  system  does  not  readily 
lend  itself  to  such  work,  and  he  suffered  only 
such  small  penalties  as  the  religious  newspapers 
inflicted,  one  of  which  went  into  a  decline  under 
his  stinging  characterization  of  it  as  "  not  only 
behind  the  age,  but  behind  all  ages."  But  he 
was  not  much  given  to  controversy  or  self- 
defence.  Only  once  or  twice  did  he  turn  on 
his  accusers,  and  then  it  was  as  with  that  "two- 
handed  engine  that  smites  once  and  smites  no 
more."  He  was  too  profound  a  lover  of  truth 
to  make  it  matter  of  debate ;  he  did  not  so 
reach  his  conclusions,  nor  would  he  so  defend 
them.  He  belonged  rather  to  the  order  of 
seers,  and  simply  declared  what  it  had  been 
given  him  to  see,  and  so  left  it. 

Whatever  may  be  said  of  "The  Vicarious 
Sacrifice"  in  the  way  of  criticism,  the  fact 
remains  that  it  introduced  into  New  England 
theology  the  moral  view  of  the  atonement,  and 


Horace  Bushnell  187 

largely  supplanted  the  existing  view.  The 
doctrine  now  preached  in  New  England,  with 
modifications  indeed,  and  much  of  independent 
interpretation,  is  that  which  runs  through  this 
treatise  —  a  fact  recognized  in  a  recent  sermon 
by  Professor  George  Harris,  of  Andover,  in 
which  he  said  that  "  his  (Dr.  Bushnell's)  theory 
is  now  more  generally  accepted  than  any  other." 
This  theory  runs  through  all  his  books.  It 
was  infolded  in  his  first  work  — "  Christian 
Nurture  "  —  which,  indeed,  contained  the  germ 
of  all  his  writings.  This  was  inevitable.  When 
he  struck  out  the  great  truth  that  the  Christian 
training  of  a  child  must  be  in  the  ways  of 
nature,  nature  being  regarded  as  God's  order, 
it  was  inevitable  that  every  doctrine  and  phase 
of  Christian  truth  should  be  treated  in  like 
manner.  Dr.  Bushnell  early,  and  by  the  very 
quality  of  his  nature,  fell  into  the  scientific 
habit  of  thought,  and  he  kept  to  it  throughout. 
He  was  often  mystical,  sometimes  inconsistent, 
but  at  bottom,  in  all  his  conceptions  and  in 
almost  every  sentence,  he  was  scientific ;  that 
is,  he  kept  his  eye  on  facts,  on  the  things  that 
are  made,  on  the  divine  order  wrought  into  the 
nature  of  man,  and  reasoned  from  them.  There- 
fore, when  he  came  to  treat  of  miracles  —  an 


188        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

inevitable  theme  for  him  —  he  searched  and 
enlarged  the  realm  of  nature  to  find  a  place 
for  them.  Here  again  his  thought  may  be  at 
times  inaccurate,  and  without  the  severity  that 
would  now  be  insisted  on,  but  none  the  less  did 
he  redeem  the  subject  from  definitions  and 
interpretations  that  defied  reason  and  provoked 
unbelief.  He  did  more ;  he  directed  attention 
to  the  field  where  they  must  be  located,  and 
stated  the  general  principles  under  which  they 
must  be  regarded ;  he  broke  down  the  artificial 
barrier  between  two  worlds  which  are  not  two 
but  one,  and  made  us  see  that  unity  in  the 
works  of  God  which  destroys  the  antithesis 
between  nature  and  miracle,  and  brings  all  into 
one  spiritual  category.  The  purpose  of  the 
book  is  indicated  in  its  title  :  "  Nature  and  the 
Supernatural  as  together  Constituting  the  One 
System  of  God."  The  treatise  is  still  of  great 
value,  and  is  perhaps  the  best  on  the  subject. 
The  tenth  chapter  has  become  a  Christian 
classic.  The  writer  did  not  have  the  advan- 
tages afforded  by  recent  science.  Evolution, 
which  simplifies  the  treatment  of  all  subjects, 
was  nothing  more  than  a  disputed  hypothesis ; 
biology  was  a  new  science  ;  the  new  psychology 
was  in  its  infancy,  and  exegesis  was  still  en- 


Horace  Bushnell  189 

thralled  under  a  hard  and  narrow  doctrine  of 
inspiration.  The  limitations  of  the  treatise  are 
due  to  these  conditions,  but  all  the  more  does 
it  reveal  the  bravery  and  insight  of  the  author ; 
he  anticipated  discoveries  and  wrought  the 
spirit  of  them  into  his  pages.  He  hewed  out 
a  path  through  a  very  tangled  wilderness, 
guided  only  by  his  insight  into  the  things  of 
God  and  by  a  deep  sense  of  the  need  of  finding 
a  way  through.  The  condition  in  which  the 
subject  lay  when  Dr.  Bushnell  began  to  write 
was  lamentable ;  it  was  exactly  that  reprobated 
by  Christ  when  the  Jews  clamoured  for  a  sign. 
Thus  preached,  it  played  fatally  into  the  hands 
of  infidelity,  and  added  to  the  perplexity  of  a 
faith  that  was  already  heavily  burdened.  As 
on  other  subjects,  he  opened  a  way  out,  stem- 
ming the  tide  of  schismatic  denial  and  rejection 
by  leading  men  into  a  region  where  they  could 
at  least  think  with  some  show  of  reason,  and 
look  about  them  with  their  feet  planted  on  the 
nature  of  things.  Dr.  Bushnell  was  accounted 
a  heretic,  but  he  saved  orthodoxy,  at  least  what 
of  it  was  worth  saving.  The  churches  of  New 
England  were  fast  drifting  into  a  condition 
where  schism  or  dry-rot  would  have  soon  made 
an  end  of  them.     He  arrested  this  process,  and 


190        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

rediscovered  for  them  the  world  of  the  spirit ; 
he  directed  their  attention  to  the  nature  of 
things,  and  made  them  a  logos  of  divine  truths  ; 
he  created  a  soil  for  an  ethical  and  reasonable 
faith,  and  sowed  seed  in  it  that  is  still  yielding 
ever-increasing  harvests. 

The  recognition  of  his  service  was  tardy  and 
scant  except  among  the  younger  clergy.  There 
was,  however,  a  quasi-recognition  in  the  dis- 
tinction that  was  made  between  his  sermons 
and  his  treatises  ;  the  latter  were  generally  set 
down  as  dangerous,  but  the  former  were  ac- 
knowledged to  be  full  of  spiritual  power  and 
comfort.  The  distinction  but  showed  the  piti- 
ful state  of  criticism  at  the  time  ;  it  was  kind 
but  weak.  The  sermons  and  the  treatises  grew 
out  of  each  other,  and  were  but  forms  of  the 
same  thing.  But  lack  of  recognition  is  a  tri- 
fling matter  ;  the  true  prophet  is  aware  that  it 
must  be  so.  It  was  not  a  specially  sore  thing 
to  Dr.  Bushnell.  He  was  immensely  stored 
with  inner  resources.  He  delighted  in  his  own 
thoughts,  and  he  found  his  way  into  that  hid- 
den world  where  he  "  fed  on  God "  (his  own 
phrase),  and  so  had  strength  and  health  of  soul. 
Late  in  life  he  said  to  a  friend,  "I  have  been 
greatly  blessed  in  my  doubtings."      In   New 


Horace  Bushnell  191 

England,  and  not  less  in  Great  Britain,  a  more 
Christlike  Gospel  is  preached,  and  Christian 
believers  the  world  over  are  living  in  the  ex- 
ercise and  comfort  of  a  more  rational  faith, 
because  of  the  work  he  did. 

He  was  a  solitary  thinker.  His  writings 
lack  the  signs  of  full  contact  with  the  scho- 
lastic world ;  and  perhaps  they  are  all  the 
better  for  it.  They  suggest  by  their  style  and 
form  that  he  thought  as  he  wrote,  and  that  he 
worked  his  way  along  to  his  conclusions  in- 
stead of  starting  with  a  full  plan.  Hence  he 
often  found  it  necessary  to  qualify  and  correct 
what  he  had  said,  and  so  his  writings  have  a 
prolixity  that  might  have  been  avoided. 

The  real  greatness  of  Bushnell  does  not  con- 
sist in  his  strictly  theological  work,  but  in 
those  separate  and  yet  connected  spiritual  reve- 
lations in  which  his  life  abounded.  Read  his 
books  —  treatise  or  essay  or  sermon  —  and  it  is 
not  the  truth  of  thought  that  most  impresses 
you,  but  the  truth  of  experience.  He  was  pre- 
eminently a  thinker,  but  he  was  still  more  a 
practical  man  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit.  A 
man  of  affairs,  of  keen  worldly  insight  and 
wisdom,  he  carried  this  quality  into  the  things 
of  the  spirit.     He  had  no  "unrelated  facts," 


192        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

as  every  title-page  and  every  chapter  shows. 
His  apprehension  of  God  in  his  personal  ex- 
perience, the  play  of  his  own  spirit  back  and 
forth  in  God,  his  moral  interpretation  of  life 
and  of  history,  his  ready  perception  of  the  di- 
vinest  truths  in  his  daily  walks,  his  easy  and 
natural  lifting  of  the  earthly  into  the  heavenly, 
and  bringing  the  powers  of  eternity  down  into 
the  commonest  events  of  life  —  these  things 
constitute  the  greatness  and  power  of  the  man. 
In  his  life  as  well  as  in  his  writings  he  over- 
came the  hard  dualism  he  found  in  the  prevail- 
ing theology,  and  became  himself  a  revelation 
of  the  oneness  of  God  in  the  world  of  the  spirit 
and  in  nature. 

The  limits  of  this  article  permit  no  mention 
of  Dr.  Bushnell  as  a  preacher,  nor  of  the  varied 
work  which  he  performed  in  other  fields  than 
theology,  nor  of  the  incidents  of  his  life.  I 
cannot  spread  out  in  detail  his  character,  in 
which  virility,  mental  vigour,  saintliness,  com- 
mon sense,  imagination,  and  spiritual  insight 
waged  no  war  with  one  another,  but  instead 
conspired  to  produce  a  man  who  stands  on  the 
same  plane  with  Edwards  and  Channing  and 
Emerson  —  the  other  great  teachers  of  the  life 
of  the  spirit  whom  New  England  has  produced. 


XI 

FREDERICK   DENISON   MAURICE 


XI 

FREDERICK   DENISON   MAURICE 

BY    THE    REV.    A.    V.    G.    ALLEN,   D.D. 

There  are  some  voices  which  are  impersonal, 
speaking,  as  it  were,  out  of  the  darkness,  giv- 
ing no  hint  of  time  or  place,  and  gaining  noth- 
ing in  power  or  directness  by  a  study  of  their 
environment.  Such  was  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
whose  message  comes  with  equal  force  to  every 
age.  Something  of  this  quality  was  in  Mau- 
rice, imparting  to  his  thought  a  certain  endur- 
ing appeal,  as  if  he  belonged  to  no  particular 
time  or  country,  or  had  received  no  special  in- 
fluence from  his  surroundings.  And  yet  no 
man  ever  lived  more  deeply  in  the  heart  of  his 
generation,  and  his  teaching  contains  a  pro- 
found response  to  the  immediate  needs  of  the 
hour. 

The  world  into  which  he  entered  seemed 
to  be  losing  its  hold  on  God.  Among  his 
more  eminent  contemporaries,  Carlyle  com- 
195 


196        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

plained  that  God  was  doing  nothing  ;  Mill 
regarded  the  divine  existence  as  an  open  ques- 
tion, and  Darwin  appeared  to  have  lost  his 
religious  faculty.  It  was  a  world  interested 
in  reform,  whose  watchwords  were  liberalism 
and  progress,  whose  programme  called  for  the 
removal  of  ancient  abuses,  under  which  were 
included  religion  and  the  Church.  In  the 
place  of  these  relics  of  a  bygone  age,  science 
was  offered  and  the  religion  of  humanity,  as  if 
adequate  substitutes.  Agitations  were  rife  for 
the  improvement  of  social  conditions  ;  but  the 
leaders,  for  the  most  part,  had  ceased  to  look 
to  God  for  aid  or  inspiration  —  it  was  time  at 
last  that  men  should  help  themselves.  The 
labouring  men,  with  their  grievances,  turned 
away  from  the  Church  and  the  means  of  grace 
as  if  they  were  empty  mockeries.  The  higher 
walks  of  thought  and  culture  were  invaded 
with  religious  doubt,  a  mood  in  which  men 
would  fain  believe  but  could  not.  The  nega- 
tion had  gone  deeper  than  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  men  professed,  at  least,  to  be- 
lieve in  natural  religion,  and  when  on  this 
ground  Bishop  Butler  had  met  them  with  his 
Analogy.  Now  natural  religion  was  called  in 
question  ;  it  had  become  the  issue  whether  God 


Frederick  Denison  Maurice  197 

existed  or  the  soul  of  man  was  immortal.  Ef- 
forts were  not  wanting  to  meet  the  situation  — 
proposed  reconstructions  of  the  Church  after 
antique  models  which  had  once  been  useful,  or 
the  presentation  of  the  claims  of  the  Roman 
Church  as  somehow  strangely  adapted  to  the 
requirements  of  the  hour. 

These  were  the  problems  of  the  age  to  which 
Maurice  appealed  with  the  conviction  that  "  no 
man,"  as  he  had  said  of  Coleridge,  ''will  ever 
be  of  much  use  to  his  generation  who  does  not 
apply  himself  mainly  to  the  questions  which 
are  agitating  those  who  belong  to  it."  It  was 
the  burden  of  his  message  that  God  was  mani- 
festing himself  in  the  contemporary  world  of 
human  thought  and  activity.  "  The  know- 
ledge of  God,"  he  wrote,  "  I  regarded  as  the 
key  to  all  other  knowledge,  as  that  which  con- 
nected knowledge  with  life."  And  again,  "The 
only  way  to  consider  philosophy  is  in  connec- 
tion with  the  life  of  the  world,  and  not  as  a 
set  of  merely  intellectual  speculations  and  sys- 
tems." The  light  of  the  world  was  first  re- 
vealed in  life,  and  life  was  the  light  of  men. 

The  preparation  of  Maurice  for  his  mission 
as  a  theologian  began  in  his  early  years,  as  a 
child  in  the  household.     His  father  was  a  Uni- 


198         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

tarian  minister,  with  a  simple,  genial  creed 
whose  principal  tenet  was  the  fatherhood  of 
God  ;  his  mother  was  a  Calvinist,  thinking  of 
God  as  absolute  sovereign  will  without  whose 
decree  of  election  salvation  was  impossible,  and 
for  herself  doubting  if  her  name  were  enrolled 
among  the  elect.  Maurice  was  forced  by  his 
filial  love  and  respect,  no  less  than  by  his  sym- 
pathetic nature,  but  also  by  his  spiritual  in- 
sight, to  live  in  the  creed  of  both  his  parents, 
and  was  thus  early  called  to  mediate  between 
religious  attitudes  that  seemed  to  neutralize 
each  other. 

His  method  of  solving  the  difficulty  was  a 
simple  one.  He  insisted  that  both  creeds 
should  be  understood  as  expressing  realities  or 
existing  relationships,  not  merely  analogies  of 
human  reasoning  or  notions  of  the  mind  which 
it  was  pleased  to  entertain.  When  thus  inter- 
preted, the  reconciliation  followed  —  the  abso- 
lute Sovereign  of  the  universe,  whose  will  was 
inflexible,  was  at  the  same  time  the  Infinite 
Father  whose  love  was  the  inmost  essence  of 
his  being.  If  no  one  could  escape  from  the 
control  of  absolute  and  sovereign  Will,  so  also 
no  one  could  be  excluded  from  the  love  of  the 
Eternal  Father.     The  range  of  fatherhood  was 


Frederick  Denison  Maurice  199 

co-extensive  with  the  energy  of  the  divine  will. 
It  expanded  before  the  vision  till  it  included 
not  only  the  Church  but  the  whole  secular 
world  as  well.  Maurice  admitted  no  distinc- 
tion between  a  special  and  a  common  grace,  for 
such  a  distinction  was  incompatible  with  the 
idea  of  fatherhood.  Preterition  or  reprobation 
as  defined  in  the  language  of  the  schools  were 
not  fit  expressions  for  describing  the  economy 
of  the  divine  will,  which  was  also  a  father's 
love.  Everywhere  it  was  the  same  God,  call 
him  the  Infinite  Father  or  the  sovereign  Will, 
who  condemned  the  evil  and  inspired  the  good. 
The  loving  providence  or  the  infinite  purpose 
of  existence  must  therefore  be  revealed  in  every 
sphere  of  human  life,  in  the  Church  and  in  re- 
ligion, but  also  in  philosophy  and  literature,  in 
art  and  science,  in  politics  and  in  the  social 
order. 

But,  further,  the  relationship  of  God  to  the 
world,  since  it  was  an  actual  or  real  relation- 
ship and  not  a  notion  begotten  by  the  mind, 
must  still  exist  apart  from  and  despite  its  la- 
tency to  the  consciousness.  The  energizing  of 
the  divine  will  was  not  dependent  upon  human 
acknowledgment  nor  limited  in  its  activity  by 
human   recognition.     The  fatherhood  of  God, 


200         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

embracing  in  its  scope  every  child  of  man,  was 
the  latent  reality  which  gave  significance  to 
baptism  or  invested  with  a  deeper  meaning  the 
process  of  conversion.  If  there  were  danger 
that  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  fatherhood 
might  be  misinterpreted  to  sanction  laxity  or 
indulgence,  yet,  when  conjoined  in  organic 
unity  with  sovereign  will,  the  love  of  God 
became  the  supreme  principle  of  moral  law ; 
righteousness  was  seen  as  the  inmost  essence 
of  the  loving  purpose  which  has  gone  forth 
into  creation  ;  the  fatherhood  which  demanded 
righteousness  in  the  children  could  grant  no 
relaxation,  but  must  seek  and  surely  find  its 
accomplishment  through  manifold  agencies  in 
life,  through  chastisement  or  the  bitter  agony 
of  experience  whether  in  this  world  or  in  an- 
other. If  the  moral  purpose  of  God  does  not 
always  appear  in  direct  manifestation,  yet  in- 
directly it  never  fails  to  be  revealed  in  the 
confusion  and  misery  which  await  the  infringe- 
ment of  the  moral  law.  The  existence  of  evil 
was  the  one  subject  upon  which  Maurice  re- 
fused to  speculate.  But  while  he  did  not  in- 
quire why  sin  should  have  entered  the  world, 
he  dwelt  upon  the  experience  that  condemned 
it  —  how  the  Bible,  the   Church,  society,  and 


Frederick  Denison  Maurice  201 

each  individual  conscience  bore  witness  to  its 
ravages.  He  recognized  also  that  the  normal 
order  of  the  world  and  the  constitution  of  man 
were  visibly  at  war  with  evil,  and  since  the  di- 
vine love  was  revealed  in  the  constitution  of 
things  and  was  also  identical  with  sovereign 
will,  evil  must  at  last  be  overcome  and  ban- 
ished from  the  universe. 

It  fell  to  the  lot  of  Maurice  to  come  into 
close  personal  contact  with  almost  every  vari- 
ety of  religious  thought  in  England  ;  and,  by 
virtue  of  that  mysterious  element  in  his  per- 
sonality which  made  him  from  his  childhood  a 
mediator  in  religious  differences,  he  learned  to 
live,  as  it  were,  in  the  divergent  forms  of  the 
common  household  of  faith,  to  feed  upon  the 
truth  they  held,  so  that  he  could  interpret  their 
mission  from  within  their  fold.  In  this  way 
he  accepted  the  doctrine  of  the  "  inner  light " 
as  held  by  the  Quakers,  while  clinging  also  to 
the  necessity  of  sacraments  and  outward  form 
as  revealed  in  the  spiritual  life  of  organic  his- 
toric Christendom.  He  was  thrown  among  the 
Irvingites  and  listened  to  their  urgent  cry  for 
the  living  Spirit  who  once  wrought  by  signs 
and  wonders  in  the  Apostolic  age.  But  he 
could  not  believe  that  the  Spirit's  action  was 


202        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

shut  up  to  any  one  form  of  manifestation  or 
that  it  had  ever  been  withdrawn  from  the 
Church.  The  Holy  Spirit  appeared  to  him  as 
the  actually  existing  bond  of  every  unity, 
whether  domestic  or  social  or  ecclesiastical,  a 
spirit  which  united  men  by  bringing  them  into 
the  fellowship  of  the  Father  and  the  Son ;  which 
spake  by  the  prophets,  but  also  in  the  conscience 
and  higher  reason  of  every  man ;  who  inspired 
the  writers  of  the  sacred  books,  but  a  Spirit 
also  without  whose  constant  presence  and  in- 
spiration no  man  could  think  or  perform  those 
things  that  are  good.  Through  his  connection 
with  the  evangelical  churches  Maurice  learned 
to  identify  the  gospel  of  Christ  with  the  proc- 
lamation of  a  message  of  deliverance  from  sin 
and  guilt.  He  remained  at  heart  an  Evan- 
gelical all  his  days,  but  he  also  widened  the 
range  of  Christ's  redemptive  work,  till  it  in- 
cluded all  other  deliverances,  from  every  form 
of  oppression  and  tyranny,  whether  ecclesias- 
tical, political,  or  social.  In  all  this  Maurice 
may  appear  as  the  pioneer  in  some  method 
unknown  before.  But  one  is  also  impressed 
with  that  unbroken  chain  of  spiritual  influ- 
ence by  which  the  generations  are  bound  to- 
gether, handing   on   to   those  who  follow   the 


Frederick  Denison  Maurice  203 

truth  which  has  been  received,  waiting  only 
till  God  shall  provide  the  medium,  the  fitting 
soil  in  which  the  living  seed  at  last  shall  germi- 
nate, take  root,  and  spring  upward  and  bring 
forth  fruit  an  hundred  fold. 

In  his  intellectual  development  Maurice  had 
the  unusual  advantage  of  taking  the  full  course 
of  study  at  Oxford  first,  and  then  at  Cam- 
bridge. He  caught  the  spirit,  the  subtle 
quality  of  each  of  the  great  universities  which 
have  stood  throughout  their  history  for  differ- 
ing ideals  and  tendencies  in  English  thought. 
Cambridge  has  been  the  congenial  home  of 
spiritual  largeness  and  freedom.  There  Puritan- 
ism found  its  stronghold  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, to  be  followed  by  the  liberal  school  in 
the  English  Church  of  Cudworth,  More,  and 
Whichcote.  It  was  at  Cambridge  that  the 
Evangelical  School  was  nourished,  and  to  Cam- 
bridge belongs  the  honour  of  ranking  Coleridge 
among  its  pupils.  Oxford,  on  the  other  hand, 
which  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  more  closely 
identified  with  the  scholastic  philosophy,  has 
given  birth  to  two  great  conservative  move- 
ments, the  Anglican  revival  under  Laud  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  again  under  Newman 
and  Pusey,  of  which  the  tendency  in  both  cases 


204        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

was  to  idealize  or  deify  the  existing  institution 
as  against  the  disintegrating  forces  of  change  or 
revolution.  Maurice  felt  the  historical  appeal, 
the  sense  of  historical  continuity  which  Oxford 
cherishes,  but  the  influence  of  Cambridge  was 
the  stronger.  He  imbibed  there  what  may  be 
called  the  spirit  of  Platonic  realism,  according 
to  which  the  eternal  idea  or  pattern  of  human 
things  is  always  larger  than  its  embodiment  in 
any  human  institution  and  forever  calls  men  to 
rise  to  its  fuller  appreciation.  However  vision- 
ary or  impracticable  the  idea  may  seem,  its 
deepest  ground  is  invoked  in  the  eternal  will. 
Thus  Maurice  was  led  to  insist  upon  the  ideal 
constitution  of  the  Church  in  Christ  its  head, 
as  the  actual  reality,  and  not  a  mere  spiritual 
aspiration  which  could  rest  in  the  background 
of  thought.  His  conception  of  the  Church, 
which  brought  him  into  conflict  with  what  may 
be  called  an  Aristotelian  realism,  divinizing  the 
existing  order  as  if  change  or  improvement 
were  but  sacrilege,  was  throughout  his  life  one 
of  the  ruling  ideas  of  Maurice's  theology.  He 
preached  it  to  the  workingmen,  he  traced  its 
presence  in  history,  he  urged  it  as  the  basis  of 
Christian  unity,  he  would  have  it  carried  to  the 
heathen  world  as  the  solvent  of  its  dark  con- 


Frederick  Benison  Maurice  205 

fusion  —  the  brotherhood  of  human  souls,  a 
divine-human  fellowship  of  which  Christ  was 
the  head  and  leader,  the  Holy  Spirit  the  bond 
of  inward  unity,  the  fatherhood  of  God  its 
eternal  ground  in  the  infinite  and  sovereign 
will. 

The  man  who  wrought  most  powerfully  upon 
Maurice  after  leaving  the  university  was  Cole- 
ridge, "the  Master,"  as  he  has  been  called, 
"of  those  who  know."  Maurice  did  not  come 
into  personal  contact  with  him,  but  the  study 
of  his  life  and  his  writings  reconciled  him  to 
the  Church  of  England,  of  which  he  became  a 
minister,  and,  above  all,  taught  him  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  It  was  no 
longer  an  arithmetical  puzzle  as  it  had  seemed 
to  the  typical  mind  of  the  last  century,  but  the 
comprehensive  formula  of  the  Christian  faith, 
which  contained  the  reconciliation  of  the  con- 
tradictions of  speculative  thought  about  the 
divine  existence  as  well  as  the  satisfaction  of 
the  deeper  needs  of  the  spiritual  life.  In  the 
light  of  God  as  one  and  yet  triune,  the  fellow- 
ships and  relationships  of  earth  were  disclosed  as 
having  their  ground  and  justification  in  the  eter- 
nal fellowship  which  existed  in  the  bosom  of  God. 
In  this  conviction  the  Christian  Church  had  re- 


206        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

sisted  the  pressure  of  the  imperial  will  in  the 
ancient  days  of  its  alliance  with  the  Roman 
Empire  —  that  the  Son  of  God  who  had  as- 
sumed humanity  in  the  body  of  this  flesh  was 
one  and  co-equal  with  the  Father.  And  again 
in  the  strength  of  this  conviction,  the  barbar- 
ism which  overcame  the  Empire  had  in  turn 
been  overcome.  It  had  also  been  the  watch- 
word of  Christianity  in  the  struggle  with  Islam 
when  the  seemingly  difficult  and  complex  idea 
of  God  had  triumphed  over  a  seeming  simplic- 
ity, which  was,  after  all,  but  an  empty  abstrac- 
tion. But  its  historical  interest  and  significance 
paled  before  its  spiritual  and  moral  appeal  to 
the  individual  soul,  or  to  social  reformers  re- 
jecting the  Church  and  disowning  God.  For 
the  deep-seated  and  widespread  scepticism  of 
the  age  was  assuming  that  God  existed  apart 
from  human  life,  indifferent  to  human  suffer- 
ing, enforcing  obligations  and  calling  for  sacri- 
fices with  which  in  Deity  there  could  be  no 
sympathy,  for  they  were  alien  to  the  divine 
nature.  But,  in  the  name  of  God  as  Father, 
Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  human  relationships  and 
duties  and  obligations  of  self-sacrifice  were 
taken  up,  as  it  were,  into  God,  and  glorified 
by  his  inmost  essential  life.     The  divine  be- 


Frederick  Denison  Maurice  207 

came  the  prototype  of  the  human ;  eternal 
fatherhood  and  sonship  were  the  pattern  from 
which  the  human  relationship  was  derived,  and 
not  an  analogy  inferred  from  the  human  family. 
Sacrifice  and  suffering  entered  as  an  integral  fac- 
tor into  the  divine  life,  before  it  proceeded  forth 
from  God  as  the  moral  law  of  the  universe.  In 
the  incarnation  of  God  in  Christ  and  in  the  aton- 
ing sacrifice  on  the  cross  was  illustrated  the 
identification  of  divine  with  human  interests. 
So  great  was  the  importance  which  Maurice 
attached  to  the  doctrine  of  the  triune  name 
that  in  his  book  on  ''  The  Religions  of  the 
World"  he  applied  it  as  the  test  by  which 
they  were  to  be  measured  and  judged.  Con- 
fucianism and  Mohammedanism  could  not  rise 
to  the  truth  of  the  fatherhood  of  God  because 
they  lacked  the  knowledge  of  the  Son,  through 
whom  alone  fatherhood  could  be  fully  revealed. 
Brahminism  abounded  in  incarnations  of  the 
divine,  but  they  ended  in  themselves  because 
the  knowledge  was  wanting  of  the  Eternal 
Father.  Buddhism  dreamed  of  an  infinite 
Spirit  in  which  all  men  shared,  but  because 
it  did  not  know  the  Father  and  the  Son  its 
doctrine  of  the  Spirit  was  void,  as  its  highest 
goal  was  also  reduced  to  Nirvana. 


208        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

The  ample  learning  which  Maurice  needed  in 
order  to  illustrate  and  enforce  the  truth  which 
he  discerned,  he  had  the  opportunity  to  gain 
during  the  years  from  1840  to  1853,  when  he 
held  the  professorship  of  history  and  literature 
in  King's  College  in  London.  His  books  bear 
witness,  and  more  particularly  his  "  History  of 
Philosophy  "  and  his  "  Social  Morality,"  to  the 
thoroughness  and  depth  of  his  acquaintance 
with  systems  of  thought,  or  his  insight  into 
men  and  motives,  or  his  power  of  interpreting 
literature  and  life.  In  these  works  we  may 
read  his  appeal  to  the  educated  mind  of  his 
age.  He  does  not  offer  new  arguments  for 
the  divine  existence,  or  endeavour  to  overcome 
scepticism  by  dialectics,  but  rather  makes  mani- 
fest how  God  is  revealed  in  all  the  higher  forms 
of  human  thought  and  expression.  All  history 
resolved  itself  before  his  eyes  into  a  spiritual 
drama.  The  world  everywhere  appeared  to 
him  as  bearing  witness  to  God,  as  if  it  were 
fed  with  the  life  of  God  and  shone  with  the 
light  of  God.  But  Maurice  does  not  appear 
in  his  books  or  elsewhere  in  his  work  as  if  en- 
gaged or  preoccupied  with  the  anxious  search 
for  God.  If  he  seems  burdened,  it  is  as  if  the 
weight  of   the   divine   revelation   might  over- 


Frederick  Denison  Maarlce  209 

power  him.  His  attitude  is  that  of  receptivity 
for  truth,  or  as  if  passivity  were  the  condition 
for  seeing  and  receiving.  His  experience  con- 
firms what  WordsAvorth  had  taught: 

Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  powers 
Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress ; 

That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
In  a  wise  passiveness. 

Think  you  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum 

Of  things  forever  speaking, 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 

But  we  must  still  be  seeking  ? 

In  addition  to  his  other  work,  Maurice  gave 
much  of  his  time  and  thought  to  the  improve- 
ment of  the  working  classes.  So  identified  was 
he  with  the  cause  of  social  reform  that  he  be- 
came known  as  the  father  of  Christian  Social- 
ism. He  was  the  founder  of  a  college  for 
workingmen  whose  success  was  mainly  owing 
to  his  disinterested  labours.  He  had  a  lofty 
conception  of  the  capacity  of  men  engaged  in 
physical  toil  and  without  education  to  receive 
the  higher  forms  of  truth  and  the  results  of 
learning.  He  aimed  to  overcome  their  pecul- 
iar scepticism  as  to  whether  God  were  doing 
anything  for  the  emancipation  of  society  from 


210         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

its  oppression.  It  was  the  spirit  of  his  teach- 
ing that  it  was  God  who  was  raising  up  the 
very  reformers  who  disowned  Him,  that  it  was 
a  divine  spirit  which  stirred  up  social  discon- 
tent as  the  condition  of  social  progress. 

While  the  thought  of  Maurice  does  not  lend 
itself  easily  to  brief  summaries,  yet  it  is  not 
difficult  to  trace  in  all  his  writings  one  com- 
mon element  which  binds  them  together  in  a 
consistent  whole.  That  "religious  realism" 
which  enabled  him  to  grasp  the  fatherhood  of 
God  as  an  actual  relationship  which  could  not 
be  broken  may  be  discerned  in  every  attitude 
of  his  mind.  He  looked  upon  religious  institu- 
tions, not  as  identical  with  their  divine  idea, 
but  as  witnesses  to  a  higher  reality.  Because 
the  reality  existed  independently  of  its  acknow- 
ledgment, he  could  be  charitable  while  holding 
the  strongest  convictions,  dogmatic  while  re- 
joicing in  the  largest  freedom  of  thought. 
What  to  the  popular  mind  seemed  like  divine 
indifference  to  human  affairs  was  to  his  mind 
the  visible  token  of  His  presence.  The  relig- 
ious doubt  from  which  others  fled  in  alarm, 
he  welcomed  as  an  aid  to  the  deeper  know- 
ledge of  God.  Where  others  spoke  of  a  lost 
and  ruined  world,  he  spoke  of  a  world  which 


Frederick  Denison  Maurice  211 

had  been  redeemed  by  Christ.  Some  said  that 
only  those  who  had  been  baptized  were  the 
children  of  God ;  others,  that  to  become  a 
child  of  God  one  must  have  been  converted 
and  have  the  witness  of  an  inward  experience ; 
he  said  that  all  men  were  children  of  God  in 
virtue  of  their  creation  by  the  Eternal  Father. 
Against  those  who  maintained  that  religion 
was  repugnant  to  the  natural  man,  he  affirmed 
religion  to  be  that  which  the  heart  needed 
and  for  which  it  craved.  In  contrast  with  the 
method  of  those  who  laboured  to  overcome  the 
natural  depravity  of  the  heart  as  the  first  step 
in  religious  experience,  he  preached  the  "  God 
within,"  even  to  reprobates,  as  a  divine  appeal 
in  order  that  they  might  claim  the  heritage  of 
sonship.  In  the  common  thought  the  Church 
of  God  was  identified  with  some  existing  insti- 
tution ;  he  regarded  the  institution  as  witness- 
ing to  the  existence  of  the  Church.  The  true 
Church  did  not  require  to  be  founded  or  car- 
ried, but  to  be  proclaimed  as  having  already 
an  actual  existence,  the  brotherhood  of  men  in 
Christ.  It  was  customary  in  speaking  of  the 
forms  of  human  government  to  classify  theoc- 
racy by  itself,  as  if  it  had  once  existed  among 
the  Jewish  people   or   been   attempted   as   an 


212         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

experiment  at  various  moments  in  history  ;  but 
he  maintained  that  theocracy,  God's  govern- 
ment, underlay  all  forms  of  human  government 
as  their  pattern,  the  test  by  which  they  would 
be  vindicated  or  condemned. 

This  reversal  of  ordinary  judgments,  to 
which  men  have  become  accustomed  by  long 
habit  of  training,  constitutes  a  difficulty  in 
reading  Maurice  which  is  not  easily  overcome 
—  a  difficulty  akin  to  that  which  followed  the 
Copernican  discovery,  when  reality  was  placed 
in  such  strange  contradiction  to  the  testimony 
of  the  senses  that  it  still  requires  an  effort 
of  the  mind  to  adjust  the  seeming  appearance 
with  the  actual  fact.  There  was  one  inference 
which  Maurice  urged  with  great  strenuous- 
ness  —  that  in  the  spiritual  world  relationships 
were  timeless,  or  could  not  be  expressed  in 
terms  of  quantity;  that  eternal  life  and  eter- 
nal death  were  phrases  charged  with  spiritual 
potency  without  reference  to  their  duration. 
This  contention  regarding  the  use  of  the  word 
"eternal"  goes  to  the  heart  of  the  Maurician 
theology,  affording  a  glimpse  into  a  higher 
order,  where  things  are  not  what  they  seem  ; 
where,  instead  of  the  divine  revolving  around 
the  human,  God  becomes  the  central  sun  of  an 


Frederick  Denison  Maurice  21  o 

infinite  spiritual  universe  in  wliom  men  live 
and  move  and  have  tlieir  being.  The  relation- 
ship of  fatherhood  and  sonship  constitutes  the 
law  of  spiritual  gravitation  from  which  there 
is  no  escape,  in  whose  glad  recognition  and 
obedience  consists  eternal  salvation. 

But,  apart  from  his  theological  teaching,  it 
is  the  supreme  tribute  to  be  paid  to  Maurice 
that  he  stood  throughout  his  life  as  a  con- 
fessor to  his  age,  listening  to  the  story  of 
human  doubt  in  deep  sympathy,  and  never 
turning  his  ear  away  from  any  man  who  found 
difficulty  in  believing.  Tennyson,  who  was  his 
friend,  has  described  him  in  what  he  did  for 
himself  and  for  others  : 

The  faith,  the  vigour,  bold  to  dwell 
On  doubts  that  drive  the  coward  back, 
And  keen  through  wordy  snares  to  track 

Suggestion  to  her  inmost  cell. 

He  fought  his  doubts  and  gathered  strength, 
He  would  not  make  his  judgments  blind, 
He  faced  the  spectres  of  his  mind 

And  laid  them ;  thus  he  came  at  length 

To  find  a  stronger  faith  his  own ; 

And  power  was  with  him  in  the  night, 
Which  makes  the  darkness  and  the  light, 

And  dwells  not  in  the  light  alone. 


214        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

It  was  the  testimony  of  Archdeacon  Hare, 
while  Maurice  was  still  alive,  that  no  one  had 
done  so  much  in  reconciling  the  reason  and 
the  conscience  of  the  thoughtful  men  of  the 
age  to  the  faith  of  the  Church :  "  It  is  in  great 
measure  owing  to  him  that  the  intellect  of  the 
rising  generation  is  with  us  rather  than  against 
us."  In  the  words  of  another  eminent  contem- 
porary, Dr.  Montagu  Butler:  "Wherever  rich 
and  poor  are  brought  closer  together,  wherever 
men  learn  to  think  more  worthily  of  God  in 
Christ,  the  great  work  that  he  has  laboured 
at  for  nearly  fifty  years  shall  be  spoken  of  as 
a  memorial  of  him."  He  held  no  high  prefer- 
ment in  the  Church  of  England,  but  the  world 
recognized  him  for  what  he  was  and  for  what 
he  had  done.  At  his  death  in  1872  there  was 
a  demonstration  of  public  feeling  which  for 
spontaneity  and  universality  had  not  been  wit- 
nessed since  the  funeral  of  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington. Beneath  his  bust  in  Westminster 
Abbey  is  recorded  the  only  estimate  we  need : 
"  He  was  not  that  light ;  but  was  sent  to  bear 
witness  of  that  light." 


XII 

CAN  WE  BE  PROPHETS? 


XII 

CAN   WE   BE   PROPHETS? 

BY  THE   VERY   REV.   F,  W.    FARRAR,  D.D. 

1.  Can  we  be  prophets?  Most  assuredly, 
yes.  It  is  not  the  possibility  which  is  wanting, 
but  the  will.  We  are  called  to  be,  every  one 
of  us  in  our  degree  and  measure,  prophets  of 
the  Lord  ;  interpreters,  that  is,  of  his  will  to 
men,  both  on  our  lips  and  in  our  lives.  It 
is,  then,  most  important  to  us  to  meditate  and 
understand  what  a  prophet  is,  what  he  has  to 
do,  what  he  has  to  expect,  what  he  may  hope 
to  achieve.  What  the  prophet  has  to  do  is 
to  sweeten  the  moral  air  which  the  world 
breathes  ;  to  raise  the  tone  of  society  ;  to  ex- 
pose the  hoUowness  of  the  compromises  which 
the  heart  is  constantly  making  with  the  powers 
of  evil ;  to  set  forth  an  example  of  something 
higher  and  more  heroical  in  religion  than  his 
age  affects  ;  to  turn  men's  eyes  from  the  danc- 
ing bubbles  of  avarice  and  ambition  to  the  dis- 
217 


218        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

tant,  the  future,  and  the  unseen  ;  to  live  as  one 
to  whom  it  has  been  granted  to  see  the  things 
that  are  invisible.  This  inscription  was  found 
carved  over  a  temple  door  in  a  southern  island  : 
"  The  world  was  given  us  for  our  own  upbuild- 
ing, not  for  the  purpose  of  raising  sumptuous 
houses  ;  life,  for  the  discharge  of  moral  and 
religious  duties,  not  for  pleasurable  indul- 
gence ;  wealth,  to  be  liberally  bestowed,  not 
avariciously  hoarded  ;  learning,  to  produce 
good  actions,  not  empty  disputes."  In  other 
words,  life  is  a  serious  and  noble  thing,  and  we 
are  in  daily  danger  —  a  danger  to  which  most 
of  us  succumb  —  of  making  it  a  paltry,  a  petty, 
a  frivolous,  a  dishonest,  and  a  corrupted  thing. 
And  if  God  sends  us  prophets,  it  is  that  they 
may  raise  us  up,  that  their  words  and  deeds 
may  breathe  like  a  fresh  wind  through  the 
perfumed  and  polluted  atmosphere  of  society  ; 
that  they  may  become  electric  to  flash  through 
all  the  world  the  wholesome  lightnings  of  truth 
and  faith,  startling  the  strongholds  of  immoral 
selfishness  and  shattering  the  refuges  of  ac- 
cepted lies.  And  yet  all  this  the  prophet  has 
to  do,  often  alone  ;  often  in  deep  obscurity  and 
isolation  ;  often  in  the  midst  of  poverty  and 
persecution  ;    and  he  must  do  it  with  a  deep 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  219 

and  crushing  sense  of  his  own  feebleness  and 
imperfections,  but  making  a  loyal  sacrifice  of 
his  earthly  life  and  his  earthly  hopes.  How, 
then,  can  we  be  prophets  —  we,  the  worldly  ; 
we,  the  sensual  ;  we,  the  idle  and  sluggish  ;  we, 
the  vulgar  and  conventional  ;  we,  who  worship 
Mammon,  and  love  pleasure,  and  delight  so 
much  in  scandal  and  hatred  and  lies?  As 
we  are,  we  cannot  be  prophets  ;  but  are  the 
wings  of  six-winged  seraphim  —  the  twain  with 
which  they  did  fly  —  folded  forever  ?  Is  there 
no  temple  more  ?  Is  heaven  closed  forever  ? 
Burns  there  no  fire  on  the  altar?  Has  the 
chariot  of  heaven  ceased  to  descend  to  earth  ? 
Are  there  no  hot  coals  of  fire  to  touch  and 
purify  the  unclean  lips  ?  Does  the  Lord  say 
no  longer  from  his  throne  above  the  cherubim, 
"Whom  shall  I  send,  and  who  will  go  for  us?  " 
He  who  made  the  stammerer  Moses  his  law- 
giver, when  he  was  in  the  wilderness  but  a 
shepherd  of  alien  sheep  ;  He  who  made  the 
peasant  Amos  a  prophet,  as  he  earned  his  few 
daily  pence  by  gathering  the  coarse  fruit  of  the 
sycamore  ;  He  who  made  a  prophet  of  Jere- 
miah when  he  was  yet  but  a  timid  child  ;  He 
who  slung  a  sword  round  the  neck  of  the  least 
of  the  children  of  Manasseh,  and  sent  him  forth 


220        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

to  smite  the  innumerable  foe  —  cannot  He  make 
sons  of  God  and  heroes  of  us,  even  of  us?  If 
the  world  summoned  us  to  her  splendours  and 
her  feasts,  if  some  one  offered  us  a  life  of  ease 
and  wealthy  self-indulgence,  what  a  rush  there 
would  be  to  claim  it ! 

Hark !  rising  to  the  ignoble  call, 
How  answers  each  bold  Bacchanal ! 

But  when  God  calls  us  and  offers  Heaven  as 
the  issue,  will  we  all  slink  back  in  silence  ? 
Shall  He  alone  find  none  to  brave  sorrow  and 
loss  for  Him,  among  the  many  whom  He  has 
made  ?     Well,  He  calls  us  now  ! 

2.  But  God  never  deceives  us.  His  prophets 
must  be  made  of  stern  stuff,  men  of  nerve  and 
insight.  He  does  not  promise  us  any  primrose 
path  of  dalliance.  He  says,  ''  If  ye  would  be 
my  soldiers,  ye  must  endure  hardness.  If  ye 
would  run  in  my  race,  ye  must  train.  If  ye 
would  be  my  athletes,  ye  must  deny  yourselves. 
If  ye  are  to  be  my  prophets,  then,  like  all  my 
best  and  greatest  prophets,  in  the  world  ye 
shall  have  tribulation."  Why  must  this  be  so  ? 
It  is,  in  one  word,  because  the  prophet  must 
escape  the  average.  The  mass  of  mankind  live 
the   average   life.     They  are  easy-going,   con- 


Can  ive  he  Prophets  ?  221 

A^entional,  traditional,  commonplace.  They  do 
what  others  do  ;  say  what  others  say  ;  they  do 
not  either  think  or  act  for  themselves  ;  any 
shibboleth  does  for  them,  so  that  it  is  current  ; 
any  sophism  suffices  them,  so  it  be  accepted  ; 
they  are  but  echoes  ;  they  pair  off,  as  one  has 
said,  in  insane  parties,  and  because  they  ignore 
the  deep  realities  of  morals  and  religion,  they 
detest  to  have  their  sand-built  houses  shaken, 
or  their  sluggish  ease  disturbed.  It  is  almost 
incredible  how  hostile  mankind  has  been  to  its 
greatest  men.  Scarcely  ever  has  there  been  a 
great  soul  uttering  truth  but  there  has  been 
the  shadow  of  Calvary.  It  is  because  the  ma- 
jority do  not  like  trouble,  and  to  face  new 
truth  is  a  trouble.  However  much  they  may 
be  told  that  there  is  no  such  word  as  mumpi- 
mus,  still,  like  the  old  Catholic  priest,  they  will 
refuse  to  change  it  for  the  right  but  unfamiliar 
sumpsimus.  And  that  is  why  the  world  poisons 
Socrates,  who  bids  it  think  out  its  own  philos- 
ophy, and  burns  those  who  bid  it  amend  its 
false  religion.  Majorities  are  constantly  in  the 
wrong.  When  Phocion  heard  the  multitude 
applaud  his  speech,  he  turned  round  in  sur- 
prise and  asked,  "  Have  I  said  anything  wrong, 
then?"     "Always,"  as  Goethe  said,  "it  is  the 


222        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

individual  who  works  for  progress,  not  the  age. 
The  ages  have  always  been  the  same."  It  is 
this  fact  which  robs  of  any  cynical  bitterness 
the  saying  of  a  great  writer,  that  the  world  is 
composed  of  some  thousand  million  human  be- 
ings—  mostly  fools.  Well,  but  the  prophet 
must  escape  the  average  ;  he  must  not  be  a 
fool.  Least  of  all  must  he  be  so  in  spiritual 
intuition  and  moral  views. 

3.  Now,  we  cannot  get  to  practical  applica- 
tions till  we  have  grasped  fundamental  facts  ; 
we  cannot  do  even  small  duties  without  the 
strength  inspired  by  great  principles.  It  re- 
quires a  converted  character  to  make  even  a 
thoroughly  honest  and  satisfactory  housemaid. 
It  is  not  so  easy  as  men  seem  to  assume  to  be  a 
Christian.  To  be  a  party  religionist  —  to  be  an 
Evangelical,  or  a  Broad  Churchman,  or  a  High 
Churchman  —  is  very  easy.  But  it  is  not  easy 
to  be  a  brave,  true,  honest  man.  Let  me,  then, 
try  to  illustrate  what  I  have  been  saying.  Let 
me  try  to  show  that  no  man  can  be  truly  good 
unless  he  escapes  the  average  ;  to  show  that  to 
escape  the  average  costs  something  ;  and  so, 
gradually,  from  great  examples,  to  learn  what 
to  us  is  so  inestimably  precious  and  indispen- 
sable to  learn  ;  namely,  how,  with  some  courage 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  223 

and  some  insight,  to  do  our  duty.  Would  God 
all  the  Lord's  people  were  prophets  ;  but  we 
cannot  be  so  by  echoing  common  falsehoods 
and  by  running  in  conventional  grooves.  Let 
me  show,  by  an  instance,  what  the  prophet 
must  do  and  bear. 

4.  In  the  third  century  after  Christ  a  boy 
was  born  at  Alexandria,  of  Christian  parents, 
in  days  of  persecution.  His  parents  trained 
him  carefully,  and  he  showed,  even  as  a  child, 
so  bright  a  wisdom  that,  as  he  slept,  the  father 
would  sometimes  kiss  reverently  the  breast  of 
his  sleeping  son,  whom  he  regarded  as  a  temple 
of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Fierce  persecution  arose, 
and  the  father  was  seized  and  imprisoned.  The 
boy,  then  but  sixteen  years  old,  showed  such 
ardent  longing  for  the  crown  of  martyrdom 
that  his  mother  had  to  conceal  his  clothes,  and 
so  prevent  him  from  going  forth  into  peril  ; 
yet,  even  then,  he  wrote  to  his  father  to  be 
brave  and  not  to  shrink.  The  father  was  mar- 
tyred. The  boy,  left  with  a  mother  and  five 
brothers  and  sisters  entirely  destitute,  toiled 
for  their  support.  Being  a  prodigy  of  learn- 
ing, he  supported  himself  by  teaching  pupils, 
and  then  sold  all  his  books  of  classic  literature 
for  an  annuity  of  a  few  pence  a  day,  on  which, 


224        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

throughout  life,  he  lived.  Taking  the  Gospel 
literally,  he  would  have  no  shoes,  and  but  one 
coat,  and  would  touch  no  strong  drink,  and 
lived  from  boyhood  in  severe  and  noble  sim- 
plicity. Almost  before  he  was  a  man  he  be- 
came the  head  of  the  great  catechetical  school 
of  Alexandria.  Amid  constant  perils  he  lived 
a  life  which  was,  from  first  to  last,  one  long 
prayer,  one  long  struggle  for  closer  union  with 
the  Eternal  and  the  Unseen.  He  exercised  on 
the  Church  of  his  own  day,  and  of  all  succeed- 
ing ages,  an  almost  incredible  influence.  He 
had  saints  and  martyrs  and  holy  hermits  and 
wise  bishops  among  his  converts  and  pupils. 
He  won  over  to  the  faith  alike  Christian  here- 
tics and  heathen  philosophers.  He  wrote  hun- 
dreds of  books  and  pamphlets  which  others, 
without  acknowledgment,  appropriated.  He 
was,  even  by  the  confession  of  his  enemies,  the 
greatest  man  who  had  risen  in  the  Church  since 
the  days  of  the  Apostles,  and  perhaps  also  the 
holiest.  His  homilies  have  been  the  type  of  all 
homilies  since.  He  laid  the  very  foundation  of 
the  science  of  textual  criticism.  He  was  the 
first  who  attempted  a  philosophy  of  Christian- 
ity. After  years  of  incredible  labour  and  self- 
denial,  in  which  he  rendered  to  the  Church 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  225 

such  services  as  no  man  has  ever  rendered 
since,  he  died  a  martyr's  death  in  the  Deciie 
persecution.  That  man  was  the  great  Chris- 
tian Father,  Origen  the  Adamantine.  And 
what  was  his  reward?  In  his  lifetime,  bitter 
envy,  malignant  persecution  ;  after  his  death, 
the  damnamus  of  Augsburg  and  the  anathema 
of  Rome.  The  splendour  of  his  attainments 
raised  him  a  host  of  enemies  ;  the  depth  of  his 
thoughts  frightened  the  conventional  ignorance 
which  took  itself  for  ortliodox  belief.  This 
greatest  and  holiest  of  men  was  branded  as  a 
heretic  nearly  tliree  centuries  after  his  death 
by  the  combined  intrigues  of  a  cunning  and 
worthless  bishop  and  a  cruel  emperor.  For 
centuries  it  continued  to  be  debated  whether 
he  was  not  suffering  infernal  torments  ;  and 
though,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  when  learning 
revived  once  more,  and  a  ray  of  light  out  of 
God's  eternity  woke  the  Middle  Ages  from 
their  dark  and  ghastly  dream,  when  ancient 
Greece  once  more  "started  into  life,  but  with 
the  New  Testament  in  her  hand  "  —  though,  I 
say,  since  then  the  best  and  greatest  have  ever 
honoured  the  name  of  Origen,  yet  this  is  the 
man  at  whom,  to  this  day,  every  raw  sciolist 
and  every  full-fed  Pharisee  still  thinks  that  he 


226        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

may  cast  a  stone.  Why  ?  Because  Origen  was 
a  prophet ;  he  escaped  the  average  ;  he  is,  even 
still,  too  great  for  their  comprehension,  too 
wide  and  deep  and  brave  a  thinker  for  the 
average  mediocrity  of  common  and  cringing 
thought. 

5.  So  fares  the  prophet  on  earth  in  matters 
of  religion.  It  is  the  same  in  matters  of  sci- 
ence. At  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century 
after  Christ  a  boy  was  born  of  a  good  family  in 
Somersetshire,  who  grew  up  to  be  one  of  the 
greatest  men  whom  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
Only  about  once  in  a  century  does  God  kindle 
the  glory  of  an  exceptional  intellect ;  and, 
alas  !  whenever  such  a  light  is  kindled,  the 
world,  which  loves  darkness,  generally  does  its 
best  to  quench  it ;  even  as,  in  some  dim  cave, 
the  birds  which  love  the  twilight  will  flap  out 
an  uplifted  torch  with  their  obscure  wings  ; 
or  as  by  night,  in  African  wilds,  the  moths  and 
beetles  will  quench  with  their  dark  carcasses 
the  traveller's  lamp.  This  boy,  born  in  1214, 
was  the  founder  of  experimental  philosophy. 
To  him  is  due  the  very  dawn  of  that  science 
which  is  now  the  glory  and  blessing  of  the 
world.  Even  in  that  age,  besides  science,  he 
mastered   Greek,  Latin,  Hebrew,  and  Arabic. 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  227 

He  was  the  earliest  writer  on  chemistry  in 
Europe.  In  his  works  he  anticipated  by  three 
centuries  the  invention  of  the  telescope,  by  four 
centuries  the  discovery  of  the  laws  of  optics, 
by  more  than  five  centuries  the  invention  of 
steam,  suspension  bridges,  the  diving-bell,  and 
the  balloon.  At  that  time  what  is  called  the 
scholastic  system  was  triumphant.  It  was 
thought  that  there  was  no  knowledge  to  be  had 
outside  the  pages  of  Aristotle.  For  a  Christian 
teacher  to  run  counter  to  this  heathen  philoso- 
pher was  to  be  a  heretic.  The  student  I  speak 
of  went  to  Oxford,  and  in  order  to  devote  his 
life  to  knowledge  he  became  a  Franciscan 
monk.  He  soon  discovered  that  the  Oxford  of 
his  day  was  languidly  feeding  on  the  thistles  of 
a  mere  verbal  knowledge  ;  and  that  there  was 
less  to  learn  from  all  Aristotle,  and  all  his  com- 
mentators, than  was  to  be  learned  from  one 
line  on  the  broad  page  of  the  works  of  God. 
He  wrote  a  book  which  he  called  his  "  greater 
work  "  to  shoAv  what  were  the  chief  causes  of 
human  ignorance.  They  were,  he  said,  these 
four :  (1)  Servile  deference  to  authority  ;  (2) 
traditionary  habit ;  (3)  the  neglect  to  train 
the  senses  to  observe  ;  and  (4)  the  disposition 
to  conceal  our  ignorance,  and  make  a  show  of 


228         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

our  supposed  knowledge.  Truer  words  were 
never  uttered,  and  they  are  as  applicable  to  relig- 
ion as  to  science,  and  now  as  they  were  then. 
Now,  what  happened  to  this  splendid  benefactor 
of  humanity  among  the  hidebound  slaves  of 
pseudo-orthodox  tradition  ?  Ignorance,  malig- 
nity, folly,  and  that  sort  of  animal  stupidity 
shown  by  men  of  decided  opinions  which  are 
based  on  nothing  —  against  which  even  the 
gods  fight  in  vain  —  led  the  dull  monks  and 
stupid  religionists  of  his  day  to  accuse  him  of 
magic  and  sorcery.  He  spent  many  years  of 
his  life  in  prison.  He  was  insulted,  scorned, 
and,  it  is  believed,  even  tortured.  That  man 
was  Roger  Bacon,  a  far  greater  man  than  Fran- 
cis Bacon,  Earl  of  Verulam,  by  whom  his  fame 
has  been  eclipsed.  It  was  not  till  the  age  of 
seventy  that,  broken  in  heart  and  broken  by 
suffering,  he  was  liberated  from  prison.  In 
the  last  eight  years  of  his  life  he  was  able  to 
do  nothing.  He  was  driven  to  the  bitter 
thought  that  men,  as  he  knew  them,  were  so 
base,  so  little,  and  so  ignorant  that  they  were 
not  worth  the  pain  and  toil  which  he  had 
endured  on  their  behalf.  God  had  inbreathed 
an  intellect  into  one  of  his  children  which 
would  have  anticipated  by  three  centuries  the 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  229 

richest  blessings  wliicli  science  has  bestowed 
upon  mankind.  God  kindled  it ;  man  quenched 
it.  Truly,  "however  we  brazen  it  out,  we  men 
are  a  little  tried."  Had  there  been  no  perse- 
cuted prophets  to  be  loftier  than  the  common 
run  of  us,  we  should  have  been  low  indeed. 

6.  I  give  these  two  instances  to  show  that  a 
man  may  be  a  prophet  in  many  directions,  but 
that  if  we  hope,  if  we  try,  in  any  direction  to 
escape  the  average,  it  will  cost  us  something. 
It  may  cost  us  nothing  less  than  the  success 
and  happiness  of  our  lives.  So  that  I  hope 
that  not  one  will  say,  "What  is  all  this  to 
me  ?  I  cannot  be  a  great  religious  thinker  like 
Origen,  or  a  great  scientific  discoverer  like 
Roger  Bacon.  I  cannot  lift  mankind  from  the 
slough  of  intellectual  sloth  and  moral  compro- 
mise in  which  they  love  to  lie."  Pardon  me  ; 
that  is  not  quite  true.  We  cannot  be  profound 
and  learned  like  Origen,  or  men  of  superb 
genius  like  Roger  Bacon,  but  every  one  of  us 
can  be  humble  like  Origen,  and  brave  like 
Origen,  and  unresentful  like  Origen  ;  and  can- 
did, and  thoughtful,  and  lovers  of  truth  like 
Roger  Bacon  ;  and  we,  like  them  both  —  in 
great  things  or  in  little,  as  God  shall  grant 
to  us  —  may  help  to  improve  the  moral  judg- 


230         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

ments  and  to  raise  the  moral  standard  of  the 
world.  To  do  this  requires  no  mental  great- 
ness, no  grand  position.  It  has  been  done 
by  youths  and  timid  girls,  by  poor  women 
and  penniless,  persecuted  men.  Many  a  poor 
woman  or  boy  may  think  that  what  I  have  said 
was  not  for  them,  because  they  never  heard  so 
much  as  the  names  of  these  great  men  ;  well, 
but  their  names,  and  the  age  in  which  they 
lived,  are  of  no  consequence  ;  what  is  of  conse- 
quence is  that  they  were  just  human  beings, 
who  breathed  common  air  of  life,  who  had  once 
been  little  babes  in  the  cradle  as  you  and  I 
were.  In  our  own  way,  to  our  own  degree,  we 
can  walk  in  their  steps,  as  they  walked  in  the 
steps  of  their  Saviour  Christ. 

7.  For,  mark,  it  does  not  want  genius  or 
power  or  learning  to  benefit  men  by  braving 
their  false  judgments,  by  scorning  their  hypo- 
critical alliances  with  sin,  by  opening  their  eyes 
to  the  infamy  of  accepted  customs.  It  only 
wants  —  if  I  may  use  a  vulgar  word  —  it  only 
wants  pluck ;  fidelity ;  moral  manliness.  It 
wants  no  knowledge  beyond  that  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer  and  the  Ten  Commandments  in  the 
vulgar  tongue.  It  only  wants  the  eyes  open 
to  see  God's  law.     Yet  how  marvellously  rare 


Can  we  be  Prophets P  231 

is  this  moral  courage  !  Brute  courage  ;  in- 
stinctive courage  ;  the  courage  of  the  tiger 
"  which  bounds  with  bare  breast  and  unarmed 
claws  upon  the  hunter's  spear";  the  flashy 
courage  of  the  bully  in  the  ring,  or  of  the  felon 
who,  in  his  own  brutal  language,  "wants  to 
'die  game'  upon  the  scaffold"  —  that  is  com- 
mon enough  ;  but  the  courage  which  dares  to 
confront  an  angry  king,  or,  standing  up  before 
a  raging  mob,  dares  to  say,  "  You  are  wrong  "; 
the  courage  which  says,  "  I  will  not  follow  the 
multitude  to  be  lost";  the  courage  which  sees 
nothing  but  feebleness  in  the  plea,  "  every  one 
else  does  it,  so  I  must  do  it  too";  the  courage 
of  the  man  who,  when  standing  up  against 
brute  force  for  law  and  right,  says,  "  No  bullets 
and  no  threats  shall  cow  me  in  the  clear  direc- 
tion of  my  duty  ";  still  more  the  courage  which 
can  face  and  shame  down  a  wrong  custom  amid 
the  execrations  of  its  votaries  —  that  courage  re- 
quires no  genius  except  a  moral  genius  which 
the  most  ignorant  man  or  woman  alive  can  show ; 
and  that  moral  genius  of  fearless  rectitude  is 
most  astonishingly  rare.  We  all  know  one  mem- 
orable instance,  to  which  I  shall  therefore  but 
passingly  allude.  We  know  how,  in  ancient 
days,    existed   the   horrible    cruelty    of   public 


232         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

games  in  which  criminals  and  gladiators  —  often 
barbarians  — fought  each  other  and  stabbed  each 
other  to  death  before  the  yelling  and  gaping 
multitude.  Who  would  have  thought  that 
such  a  custom  would  have  survived  no  less 
than  four  centuries  of  Christianity?  Yet  it 
did  ;  and  we  need  not  be  so  much  surprised 
when  we  remember  that  our  fathers  looked  on 
unmoved  at  the  English  brutalities  of  bear- 
baiting  and  cock-fighting  ;  that  dog -fighting 
still  secretly  survives,  that  there  may  be  men 
even  among  my  readers  who  have  looked  on  at 
the  foul  and  filthy  spectacle  of  a  prize-fight. 
But  who  stopped  gladiatorial  shows  ?  Who 
wiped  that  infamy  from  the  manners  and 
morals  of  a  nominally  Christian  Empire  ?  Not 
emperors,  or  consuls,  or  lawyers,  or  writers  of 
genius,  or  eloquent  preachers,  or  learned  di- 
vines, but  just  a  rude,  illiterate,  unknown 
Asiatic  monk,  who  had  the  courage  to  say, 
"  This  is  wrong,"  and  the  courage  to  say,  "  So 
far  as  I  am  concerned,  it  shall  not  be."  The 
show  was  going  on  ;  the  myriads  were  assem- 
bled in  the  Coliseum ;  the  gladiators  were 
matched  ;  the  Emperor  was  in  the  chair ; 
there  was  a  clash  of  swords  and  a  stream  of 
blood,    and   the   horrible  spectacle   had   fairly 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  233 

begun.  Then,  in  his  monk's  rude  dress,  down 
into  the  arena  leaped  the  intrepid  man,  and, 
unarmed  as  he  was,  thrust  himself  between  tlie 
weapons  of  that  murderous  struggle.  It  was 
the  poor  blind  monk  Telemachus.  ''  Who  is 
he  ?  What  presumptuous  insolence  !  Down 
with  him !  "  The  mob  hooted,  yelled,  raged, 
leaped  over  the  barriers,  hurled  stones  at  him, 
would  have  rent  him  limb  from  limb.  The  very 
gladiators,  whom  he  would  have  saved,  turned 
their  swords  against  him.  He  fell  a  mangled 
mass,  beaten  to  death  by  innumerable  blows. 
It  is  the  only  day  of  all  his  life  of  which  a 
single  fact  is  known.  But  what  a  day  !  it  was 
a  day  in  which  his  plain  sense  of  right  and 
wrong,  his  plain  courage  in  acting  up  to  it,  had 
done  nothing  less  than  liberate  the  world  ! 

Sound,  sound  the  trumpet ;  shrill  the  fife  ! 

To  all  the  sensual  world  proclaim, 
One  crowded  hour  of  glorious  life 

Is  worth  a  world  without  a  name  ! 

8.  Let  me  give  another  instance.  It  requires 
no  small  courage  to  resist  the  power  and  decrees 
of  kings.  It  is  never  right  to  do  so  except  when 
righteousness  and  truth  demand,  and  one  is 
sorry  to  see  those  high  dear  issues  confused  for 


234         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

the  sake  of  mere  fantastic  puerilities.  When 
they  do,  when  there  is  a  clear  collision  between 
conscience  and  the  civil  power,  no  good  man, 
no  true  man,  no  brave  man,  ought  to  flinch. 
Isaiah,  we  saw,  did  not  flinch  before  Ahaz  and 
Manasseh  ;  nor  Elijah  before  Jezebel ;  nor  St. 
Ambrose  before  Theodosius  ;  nor  St.  Chrysos- 
tom  before  Eudosia.  Yet  even  Luther  and 
Melancthon  did  before  Philip  of  Hesse.  John 
had  said  to  Herod,  with  noble  and  blunt 
forthrightness,  "It  is  not  lawful  for  thee  to 
have  her "  ;  yet  Luther  and  Melancthon  — 
though  the  shame  of  it  afterwards  almost  broke 
Melancthon's  heart  —  practically  allowed  Philip 
of  Hesse  to  contract  a  bigamous  marriage. 
Now  we,  thank  God,  are  never  likely,  in  any 
worthy  or  sensible  cause,  to  come  into  collision 
with  the  civil  power  ;  but  there  is  not  one  of  us 
who  may  not  have  to  confront  some  superior  — 
our  employer  in  an  office,  our  master  in  a  shop, 
if  they  bid  us  do  wrong.  And  this  may  cost 
us  much  ;  and  there  is  a  tremendous  temptation 
not  to  do  it.  Yet  how  invaluable  to  others  one 
brave  word,  one  brave  act,  may  be!  In  the 
reign  of  James  II.,  in  1683,  the  clergy  were 
ordered  to  read  a  declaration  which  they  held 
to  be  illegal.     Even   eminent  laymen   advised 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  235 

submission  ;  and  to  refuse  it  was  to  brave  a 
tyrant  as  unscrupulous  and  as  cruel  as  he  was 
narrow  and  bigoted.  Bishop  Sprat  had  the 
baseness  to  comply,  and  with  pale  face  and 
shaking  hands  he  read  it  in  the  Abbey  amid 
the  noise  of  the  congregation  as  they  indignantly 
crowded  out.  But  fifteen  London  clergymen 
met  to  consider  whether  they  should  do  it. 
They  were  inclined  to  yield,  when  Dr.  Edward 
Fowler  got  up  and  said,  "I  must  be  plain. 
The  question  is  quite  simple.  Let  each  man 
say  yes  or  no.  But  I  cannot  be  bound  by  the 
vote  even  of  the  majority.  This  declaration  I 
cannot  in  conscience  read."  His  courage  fired 
the  rest,  carried  the  day,  and  saved  England 
from  a  Popish  tyranny.  In  four  churches,  only, 
of  London  was  the  order  read.  The  father  of 
John  Wesley,  then  a  curate  in  London,  chose  for 
his  text  that  day  the  words,  '^  Be  it  known  unto 
thee,  O  King,  that  we  will  not  serve  thy  gods, 
nor  worship  the  golden  image  which  thou  hast 
setup." 

9.  This  is  to  act  in  the  spirit  of  a  prophet. 
It  is  to  see  the  truth  plainly,  and  to  act  up 
to  it  boldly  ;  to  see  the  truth  unblinded  by 
the  mists  of  self-interest  or  the  cobwebs  of 
casuistry  ;  to  act  up  to  it  though  rulers  may 
threaten  and  mobs  may  yell. 


236        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

I  will  give  another  illustration  in  our  own 
day.  In  the  youth  of  many  of  us  duels  were 
still  common.  The  statesmen  of  that  time,  the 
literary  men  of  that  time,  had  —  many  of  them 
—  been  engaged  in  duels,  as  some  living  men 
of  eminence  have  been.  The  custom  was  bad, 
as  un-Christian,  as  anti- Christian  as  anything 
could  be  ;  it  was  "a  mixture  of  fashion  and 
revengefulness,  of  murder  and  suicide."  And 
yet  society,  so  far  from  condemning  it,  consid- 
ered it  a  necessary  institution ;  and  every 
hot-blooded  young  fool  who  misunderstood  a 
neighbour's  remark  thought  himself  entitled  to 
demand  what  he  called  "satisfaction."  Now, 
though  this  spirit  of  murderous  resentment  and 
this  reckless  disregard  of  human  life  stood 
utterly  condemned  before  the  bar  of  every 
moral  law,  it  required  a  very  brave  man  indeed 
to  resist  it.  A  story  is  told  of  one  such  brave 
man.  An  insulting  adversary  spat  in  his  face. 
"Young  man,"  he  said,  "if  I  could  wipe  your 
blood  off  my  conscience  as  easily  as  I  can  wipe 
your  insult  off  my  face,  I  would  strike  you 
dead  this  moment."  But  the  person  who  did 
more  than  any  one  to  give  the  death-blow  to 
this  wicked  and  senseless  custom  in  our  day 
was  a  peer  —  the  Earl   of   Shaftesbury  —  who 


Can  we  be  Prophets  f  237 

stands  foremost  for  his  services  to  mankind. 
Years  ago  he  received  a  challenge  from  some 
blustering  opponent.  Instead  of  accepting  it, 
he  wrote  back  a  quietly  contemptuous  refusal, 
and  sent  the  letters  to  the  police  court  and  the 
newspapers.  After  that  the  proposal  to  set- 
tle a  quarrel  by  being  shot  at  and  shooting 
at  some  else — a  mode  of  settlement  which, 
though  it  did  not  stand  above  the  level  of  the 
morality  of  the  O  jib  ways,  yet,  simply  because 
it  was  the  custom  of  society,  did  not  strike 
our  grandfathers  as  grotesque  or  wrong  —  fell 
before  the  force  of  courage  and  insight  into 
moral  contempt  and  merited  disgrace. 

I  have  dwelt  on  these  instances  solely  be- 
cause the  concrete  is  more  likely  to  explain 
itself,  more  likely  to  act  as  a  motive,  than  the 
abstract.  And,  not  to  talk  only  of  distant  and 
heroic  things  and  persons  of  which  history  tells, 
I  will  give  a  very  modern  and  every-day  in- 
stance. The  story  has  got  into  books ;  it  has 
been  told  of  various  schools  and  other  com- 
munities, but,  as  I  tell  it  you,  it  was  told  me 
by  one  who  knew,  and  was  himself  an  actor 
in  the  scene.  More  than  forty  years  ago,  at  a 
great  English  school  (and  in  those  days  that 
state  of  things  was  common),  no  boy  in  the 


238        Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

large  dormitories  ever  dared  to  say  his  pray- 
ers. A  young  new  boy — neither  strong,  nor 
distinguished,  nor  brilliant,  nor  influential,  nor 
of  high  rank  —  came  to  the  school.  The  first 
night  that  he  slept  in  his  dormitory  not  one 
boy  knelt  to  say  his  prayers.  But  the  new 
boy  knelt  down,  as  he  had  always  done.  He 
was  jeered  at,  insulted,  pelted,  kicked  for  it; 
and  so  he  was  the  next  night,  and  the  next. 
But,  after  a  night  or  two,  not  only  did  the 
persecution  cease,  but  another  boy  knelt  down 
as  well  as  himself,  and  then  another,  until  it 
became  the  custom  for  every  boy  to  kneel 
nightly  at  the  altar  of  his  own  bedside.  From 
that  dormitory,  in  which  my  informant  was, 
the  custom  spread  to  other  dormitories,  one 
by  one.  When  that  young  new  boy  came  to 
the  school,  no  boy  said  his  prayers ;  when  he 
left  it,  without  one  act  or  word  on  his  part  be- 
yond the  silent  influence  of  a  quiet  and  brave 
example,  all  the  boys  said  their  prayers.  The 
right  act  had  prevailed  against  the  bad  cus- 
tom and  the  blinded  cowardice  of  that  little 
world.  That  boy  still  lives;  and  if  he  had 
never  done  one  good  deed  besides  that  deed, 
be  sure  it  stands  written  for  him  in  golden 
letters  on  the  Recording  Angel's  book.     Now, 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  239 

is  not  that  kind  of  act  an  act  which  any  one 
of  us,  from  the  richest  statesman  down  to  the 
youngest  boy,  might  imitate?  Are  there  no  bad 
customs,  no  immoral  conventions,  no  base  ac- 
quiescences,  no  tolerated  evils,  in  society  ?  And 
if  so,  have  you  no  share  in  them?  Have  you 
made  no  attempt  to  make  a  compromise  be- 
tween Christ  and  Belial?  Are  there  no  Tem- 
ples of  Rimmon  in  England  ?  And,  if  so,  have 
we  never  bowed  in  them  ?  Well,  whenever  we 
see  a  wrong  deed  and  have  the  courage  to 
say,  "  It  is  wrong,  and  I,  for  one,  will  have 
nothing  to  do  with  it"  ;  whenever  we  come 
in  contact  with  a  low  and  un-Cliristian  stand- 
ard, or  a  bad,  unworthy  habit,  and  are  man 
enough  first  to  refuse  for  our  own  part  to 
succumb  to  it,  and  then  to  do  our  best  to 
overthrow  it — we  are  prophets.  Indeed,  those 
who  live  in  poor  streets  have  even  more  oppor- 
tunities of  taking  this  line  and  of  making  this 
stand  than  others  have.  If  the  Gospel  means 
the  example  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  remem- 
ber that  this  is  the  Gospel  and  nothing  but  the 
Gospel,  though  it  be  not  expressed  in  the  shib- 
boleths which  Pharisees  are  most  fond  of  writ- 
ing on  their  broad  phylacteries.  For  this  —  to 
see  sin,  which  tried  to  pass  itself  off  for  virtue ; 


240         Prophets  of  the  Christian  Faith 

to  expose  hypocrisy,  which  wore  the  garb  of 
religion  ;  to  save  society,  which  was  perishing 
of  its  own  hidden  corruption ;  to  teach  truth, 
though  men  hated  it;  to  scatter  darkness, 
though  men  loved  it;  to  reveal  the  God  of 
Love,  though  men  had  represented  him  as  a 
Moloch  of  hatred;  to  teach  men  that  their 
work  in  life  was  to  love  and  to  help  their 
fellow-men,  and  so  (and  not  by  mere  exclusive 
formulae  and  malignant  orthodoxies)  to  save 
their  own  souls  —  this,  this  emphatically,  was 
the  work  of  Christ.  His  work  and  therefore 
our  work,  for  which  he  will  inspire  the  cour- 
age. Be  brave,  be  just,  be  truthful  and  honest 
to  the  heart's  core,  and  so  serve  your  brother 
man,  and  so  serve  best  your  Father  God,  and 
your  Saviour  the  Lord  Christ.  If  those  be  not 
lessons  of  the  Gospel  of  the  Pharisees,  they  are, 
ten  thousand  fold  more  than  a  gloomy  Calvin- 
ism or  a  sectarian  shibboleth,  the  lessons  of  the 
Gospel  of  Christ.  "  There  are,"  a  great  states- 
man said,  "there  are  steeps  of  Alma  on  the 
field  of  duty  no  less  than  on  the  field  of  blood." 
The  question  is,  will  we  be  one  of  the  vulgar 
throng  that  will  not  face  them,  or  will  we  be 
individual  soldiers,  however  humble,  in  the 
"  thin  red  line  "  that  carries  them  against  the 


Can  we  he  Prophets?  241 

foe  ?  If  of  the  latter,  then  God  will  make  us, 
too,  his  prophets,  and  will  say  to  us,  as  to 
Ezekiel  : 

"And  thou,  son  of  man,  be  not  afraid  of 
them.  Be  not  afraid  of  their  faces  ;  be  not 
afraid  of  their  words,  though  briers  and  thorns 
be  with  thee,  and  thou  dost  dwell  among  scor- 
pions." 


THE  END 


OUTLINES  OF  SOCIAL  THEOLOGY. 

By  WILLIAn  DE  WITT  HYDE,  D.D. 

President  of  Bowdoin  College. 

i2mo.    Cloth.    Price  $1.50. 

"  Altogether  it  is  a  book  for  the  times,  —  fresh,  vigorous,  intelligent,  broad, 
and  brave,  and  one  that  will  be  welcomed  by  thinking  people." —  Christian 
Guide. 

"  President  Hyde  does  not  aim  to  upset  established  religion,  only  to  point 
out  how  the  article  we  now  have  may  be  improved  on  its  social  side,  as  to 
which  there  will  be  no  dispute  that  it  is  wofully  lacking.  His  argument  is 
sound  and  sensible,  and  his  hook  deserves  to  be  widely  read."  —  Philadel- 
phia Evening  Bulletin. 

"The  book  is  remarkable  for  its  vigorous  style  and  stimulating  thought, 
and  is  a  very  valuable  contribution  to  the  discussion  of  vital  questions  of  the 
6Ay."  —  Boston  Home  Journal. 


SOCIAL  EVOLUTION. 

By  BENJAHIN  KIDD. 

NEW    EDITION,    REVISED,    WITH    A    NEW   PREFACE. 
Crown  8vo.    Cloth.    Price  $1.50. 

"  It  is  a  study  of  the  whole  development  of  humanity  in  a  new  light,  and 
it  is  sustained  and  strong  and  fresh  throughout.  ...  It  is  a  profound  work 
which  invites  the  attention  of  our  ablest  minds,  and  which  will  reward  those 
who  give  it  their  careful  and  best  thought.  It  marks  out  new  lines  of  study, 
and  is  written  in  that  calm  and  resolute  tone  which  secures  the  confidence 
of  the  reader.  It  is  undoubtedly  the  ablest  book  on  social  development  that 
has  been  published  for  a  long  time."  —  Boston  Herald. 

"  Those  who  wish  to  follow  the  Bishop  of  Durham's  advice  to  his  clergy 
—  '  to  think  over  the  questions  of  socialism,  to  discuss  them  with  one  another 
reverently  and  patiently,  but  not  to  improvise  hasty  judgments  '  —  will  find 
a  most  admirable  introduction  in  Mr.  Kidd's  book  on  social  evolution.  It  is 
this,  because  it  not  merely  contains  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  very  wide 
field  of  human  progress,  but  is  packed  with  suggestive  thoughts  for  inter- 
preting it  aright.  .  .  .  We  hope  that  the  same  clear  and  well-balanced  judg- 
ment that  has  given  us  this  helpful  essay  will  not  stay  here,  but  give  us  fur- 
ther guidance  as  to  the  principles  which  ought  to  govern  right  thinking  on 
this  the  question  of  the  day.  We  heartily  commend  this  really  valuable 
study  to  every  student  of  the  perplexing  problems  of  socialism."— TA^ 
Chitrchfnan. 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY, 

66   FIFTH    AVENUE,  NEW   YORK. 

I 


VERBUM  DEI. 
THE  YALE  LECTURES  ON  PREACHING,  1893. 

By  ROBERT  F.  HORTON.  M.A. 

Price  $1.50. 

"  His  intensely  sensitive  spirit  makes  him  eager  to  be  in  the  high- 
est degree  helpful  to  the  faith  and  holy  living  of  the  people  of  his 
time.  He  knows  well  the  thoughts,  the  questionings,  the  doubts, 
tlie  longings,  of  the  immense  number  of  thoughtful  people  who  are 
in  danger  of  tumbling  over  some  mistaken  idea  or  unfounded  preju- 
dice before  getting  at  the  truth." —  The  Advance. 

"  Such  a  book  is  not  alone  for  the  young  theological  student.  It 
contains  a  revelation  for  every  preacher,  every  layman,  every  under- 
standing mind." —  The  Ram's  Horn. 

"  The  author  opens  a  fresh  field."  —  Boston  Traveler. 


HEREDITY  AND  CHRISTIAN 
PROBLEMS. 

By  AMORY  H.  BRADFORD,  D.D. 

i2mo.    Cloth.     Price  $1.50. 

"  It  is  a  most  timely  corrective  to  the  drift  of  popular  exaggeration, 
and  it  is  a  most  clear  and  forcible  presentation  of  many  widely  mis- 
understood truths."  —  From  a  letter  to  the  author  from  Bishop  Potter. 

"  A  popular  and  instructive  discussion  of  the  vexed  question  of 
heredity.  .  .  .  Dr.  Bradford  discusses  it  in  a  robust,  intelligent, 
straightforward,  and  thoroughly  Christian  way,  and  his  book  will  be 
a  solid  help  to  every  student  of  human  nature." —  The  Christian 

Advocate. 

"  The  really  fine  and  characteristic  feature  in  the  scheme  of  reform 
presented  by  Dr.  Bradford  is  his  faith  in  Christianity  as  a  divine  and 
spiritual  power  in  the  world,  set  to  operate  along  the  lines  of  certain 
intelligent  methods." —  The  Independent. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY, 

66   FIFTH   AVENUE,  NEW   YORK. 
2 


Princeton  TheolMiMj  iif niiJifiJjinij' llTji" 

1    1012  01232  0919 


Date  Due 

Af)  4  -m 

u.          -« 

%8    3 

ft 

Ac  2  8  '41 

K!  9.  'i? 

lie     y   .i . 

C      ' 

da  1  a  '4 

8 

fiP2  8'4 

8 

'.k.ii^!'^ 

IT 

-^frn^ 

^ 

